A sudden feeling of tenderness floods Rodya's heart and softens it, and he asks Sonya: "Do not forsake me." and she vows she will "Never, forsake you, nowhere! . . . I will follow you wherever you go. . . I will even follow you to prison." At the mention of prison or Siberia, Raskolnikov recoils, and his haughty attitude returns.
When Sonya asks him how he could bring himself to do such a thing, Raskolnikov offers explanations ranging from his poverty to his Ubermensch theory. Each of his reasons is rejected so that Raskolnikov never successfully explains his crime. After many attempts to explain the crime, he turns to Sonya and asks "tell me what to do now?" She requests him "Go at once, this very minute, stand at the cross-roads, bow down, first kiss the earth which you have defiled [desecrated] and then bow down to the whole world and say to all men aloud, 'I am a murderer!'"
When Rodya questions this, she tells him again: "Accept suffering and achieve atonement through it." Rodya hedges still and asks Sonya if she will come and visit him in prison, and as she affirms that she will, she offers him the cypress-wood cross that was once Lizaveta's. He reaches for it, but decides it would be better if he accepted it later, and Sonya agrees: "When you accept your suffering, you shall put it on."
At this crucial moment, Lebezyatnikov rushes into the room.
