there was a darkness before his eyes.

He looked round hurriedly, he was searching for something. He wanted
to sit down and was looking for a seat; he was walking along the K----
Boulevard. There was a seat about a hundred paces in front of him. He
walked towards it as fast he could; but on the way he met with a little
adventure which absorbed all his attention. Looking for the seat, he had
noticed a woman walking some twenty paces in front of him, but at first
he took no more notice of her than of other objects that crossed his
path. It had happened to him many times going home not to notice the
road by which he was going, and he was accustomed to walk like that. But
there was at first sight something so strange about the woman in front
of him, that gradually his attention was riveted upon her, at first
reluctantly and, as it were, resentfully, and then more and more
intently. He felt a sudden desire to find out what it was that was so
strange about the woman. In the first place, she appeared to be a girl
quite young, and she was walking in the great heat bareheaded and with
no parasol or gloves, waving her arms about in an absurd way. She had
on a dress of some light silky material, but put on strangely awry, not
properly hooked up, and torn open at the top of the skirt, close to the
waist: a great piece was rent and hanging loose. A little kerchief was
flung about her bare throat, but lay slanting on one side. The girl was
walking unsteadily, too, stumbling and staggering from side to side. She
drew Raskolnikov's whole attention at last. He overtook the girl at the
seat, but, on reaching it, she dropped down on it, in the corner;
she let her head sink on the back of the seat and closed her eyes,
apparently in extreme exhaustion. Looking at her closely, he saw at once
that she was completely drunk. It was a strange and shocking sight. He
could hardly believe that he was not mistaken. He saw before him the
face of a quite young, fair-haired girl--sixteen, perhaps not more than