"Not at all. I am not pale. On the contrary, I am very well!" answered Raskolnikoff in a tone of voice which had all at once become brutal and violent. He felt rising within him uncontrollable anger. "Anger will make me say some foolish thing," he thought. "But why do they exasperate me?" "He was rather unwell! A pretty expression, to be sure!" exclaimed Razoumikhin. "The fact is that up to yesterday he has been almost unconscious. Would you believe it, Porphyrius? Yesterday, when he could hardly stand upright, he seized the moment when we had just left him, to dress, to be off by stealth, and to go loafing about, Heaven only knows where, till midnight, being, all the time, in a completely raving condition. Can you imagine such a thing? It is a most remarkable case!" "Indeed! In a completely raving state?" remarked Porphyrius, with the toss of the head peculiar to Russian rustics. "Absurd! Don't you believe a word of it! Besides, I need not urge you to that effect--of course you are convinced," observed Raskolnikoff, beside himself with passion. But Porphyrius Petrovitch did not seem to hear these singular words. "How could you have gone out if you had not been delirious?" asked Razoumikhin, getting angry in his turn. "Why have gone out at all? What was the object of it? And, above all, to go in that secret manner? Come, now, make a clean breast of it--you know you were out of your mind, were you not? Now that danger is gone by, I tell you so to your face." "I had been very much annoyed yesterday," said Raskolnikoff, addressing the magistrate, with more or less of insolence in his smile, "and, wishing to get rid of them, I went out to hire lodgings where I could be sure of privacy, to effect which I had taken a certain amount of money. Mr. Zametoff saw what I had by me, and perhaps he can say whether I was in my right senses yesterday or whether I was delirious? Perhaps he will judge as to our quarrel." Nothing would have pleased him better than there and then to have strangled that gentleman, whose taciturnity and equivocal facial expression irritated him. "In my opinion, you were talking very sensibly and even with considerable shrewdness; only I thought you too irritable," observed Zametoff off-handedly. "Do let us have some tea! We are as dry as fishes!" exclaimed Razoumikhin. "Good idea! But perhaps you would like something more substantial before tea, would you?" "Look alive, then!"