On his way to see Sonya, Raskolnikov wonders if it is absolutely necessary to tell Sonya who killed Lizaveta. When she meets him, she had indeed been waiting for him and she pleads that he not talk to her the way he did yesterday — "there is enough misery in the world." But Raskolnikov ignores her plea and immediately reminds her of the things that he had said yesterday.
Over her protests, Raskolnikov asks her a hypothetical question — that is, between Luzhin and Katerina, which one should be allowed to go on living? Should Luzhin live and continue committing acts of evil and hate crimes and causing the imprisonment of people like Sonya and the deaths of Katerina and the children? Or should Katerina Ivanovna go on living? "How do you decide? Which of them should die?" Sonya refuses to answer saying "I can't know God's intentions? Why do you ask such questions that have no answer? Who am I to judge who shall live and who shall not?" As Raskolnikov asks these difficult questions, Sonya realizes his suffering and asks what is troubling him.
Raskolnikov reminds Sonya that he had promised to tell her today who killed Lizaveta. To Sonya's frightened response, he first asks her to guess and then tells her to "take a good look at me." Somehow the dreadful knowledge is communicated to Sonya and all of her suffering suddenly becomes magnified. She shrinks from Raskolnikov. Recovering immediately, she flings herself on her knees in front of him, crying out: "What have you done, what have you done to yourself?. . . .There is no one, no one unhappier than you in the whole world."
