I
At one o'clock on a spring day of 1868, in Petersburg, a man of twenty-seven, carelessly and shabbily dressed, was mounting the back stairs of a five-storied house in Officers' Street. Tramping heavily with his over-shoes trodden down at heel, and slowly rolling his bulky, ungainly person as he moved, this man at last reached the very top of the stairs. He stopped before a half-open door, hanging off its hinges, and without ringing the bell, merely giving a noisy sigh, he swung into a small, dark anteroom.
'Is Nezhdanov at home?' he called in a deep and loud voice.
'He 's not─I'm here, come in,' came from the next room another voice, a woman's, also rather gruff.
'Mashurina?' queried the new-comer.
'Yes, it's me. And you─Ostrodumov?'
'Pimen Ostrodumov', he answered, and first carefully pulling off his rubber over-shoes, and then hanging his threadbare little old cloak on
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