"Elizabeth—I asked her to!"
"Elizabeth. How strange!" he thought. Everything with Sonia assumed to his mind an increasingly extraordinary aspect. He took the book to the light, and turned it over. "Where is mention made of Lazarus?" asked he abruptly.
Sonia, looking hard on the ground, preserved silence, whilst moving somewhat from the table.
"Where is mention made of the resurrection of Lazarus? Find me the passage, Sonia."
The latter looked askance at her interlocutor. "That is not the place—it is the Fourth Gospel," said she dryly, without moving from the spot.
"Find me the passage and read it out!" he repeated, and sitting down again rested his elbow on the table, his head on his hand, and glancing sideways with gloomy look, prepared to listen.
Sonia at first hesitated to draw nearer to the table. The singular wish uttered by Raskolnikoff scarcely seemed sincere. Nevertheless she took the book. "Have you ever read the passage?" she asked him, looking at him from out the corners of her eyes. Her voice was getting harder and harder.
"Once upon a time. In my childhood. Read!"
"Have you never heard it in church?"
"I—I never go there. Do you go often yourself?"