And what if the boxes were to float instead of sinking?
And of course they would.
Even as it was, everyone he met seemed to stare and look round, as if they had nothing to do but to watch him.

"Why is it, or can it be my fancy ?" he thought.
At last the thought struck him that it might be better to go to the Neva.

There were not so many people there, he would be less observed, and it would be more convenient in every way, above all it was further off.

He wondered how he could have been wandering for a good half-hour, worried and anxious in this dangerous past without thinking of it before.

And that half-hour he had lost over an irrational plan, simply because he had thought of it in delirium! He had become extremely absent and forgetful and he was aware of it.