As noted earlier, by dressing in his new clothes and accepting the money from his mother, Raskolnikov is ready to move in the direction of redemption. On his walk, his first act is to give five kopecks to a 15-year-old street singer, an act of human compassion. In another incident, he gave a wench begging for 6 kopecks a total of 15 kopecks. Feeling his own compassion, his thoughts turn to living even if he is "confined to a square yard of space it is better than immediate death" — a thought that becomes a motif which he rejects or accepts according to his desire to live.
When he enters a cafe to have tea, he asks for the newspapers of the last five or six days. Throughout Europe, cafes always have newspapers and often the latest magazines for their customers to read, and Raskolnikov takes advantage of this custom to request the papers of the last five or six days when he was anti-social and then ill. Here in the cafe, he meets Zametov and thinks of confession for the sixth time. This time, however it is a type of real confession: "Now I will declare to you. . .no, better, I'll confess," but the way the confession is made makes Zametov see it only as a result of Raskolnikov's delirium and sickness. His explanation follows exactly the same steps that he had taken himself in committing the crime. At the end of the explanation, Raskolnikov asks "And what if it was I who murdered the old woman and Lizaveta?"
The confession, however, is not as readily dismissed by Zametov as Raskolnikov believes, and later it is used as part of Zametov's suspicion against Raskolnikov.
