"Why were you so impatient, batuchka? What is it?" she asked, glancing at the pledge.
"The silver cigarette case of which I spoke the other day."
She held out her hand. "But why are you so pale, why do your hands shake? What is the matter with you, batuchka?"
"Fever," replied he abruptly. "You would be pale too if you had nothing to eat." He could hardly speak the words and felt his strength failing. But there was some plausibility in his reply; and the old woman took the pledge.
"What is it?" she asked once more, weighing it in her hand and looking straight at her visitor.
"Cigarette case, silver, look at it."
"It doesn't feel as though it were silver. Oh! what a dreadful knot!"
She began to untie the packet and turned to the light (all the windows were closed in spite of the heat). Her back was turned toward Raskolnikoff, and for a few seconds she paid no further attention to him. He opened his coat, freed the hatchet from the loop, but did not yet take it from its hiding place; he held it with his right hand beneath the garment. His limbs were weak, each moment they grew more numbed and stiff. He feared his fingers would relax their hold of the hatchet. Then his head turned giddy.
"What is this you bring me?" cried Alena Ivanovna, turning to him in a rage.
There was not a moment to lose now. He pulled out the hatchet, raised it with both hands, and let it descend without force, almost mechanically, on the old woman's head. But directly he had struck the blow his strength returned. According to her usual habit, Alena Ivanovna was bareheaded. Her scanty gray locks, greasy with oil, were gathered in one thin plait, which was fixed to the back of her neck by means of a piece of horn comb. The hatchet struck her just on the sinciput, and this was partly owing to her small stature. She scarcely uttered a faint cry and collapsed at once all in a heap on the floor; she was dead.