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- PART I
CHAPTER I
On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man
came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and
walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge.
He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the
staircase. His garret was under the roof of a high, five-storied
house and was more like a cupboard than a room. The landlady
who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, lived on
the floor below, and every time he went out he was obliged to
pass her kitchen, the door of which invariably stood open. And
each time he passed, the young man had a sick, frightened feel-
ing, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He was hope-
lessly indebt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her.
This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the
contrary; but for some time past he had been in an overstrained
irritable condition, verging on hypochondria. He had become
so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated from his fellows
that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but any one at
all. He was crushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position
had of late ceased to weigh upon him. He had given up attend-
ing to matters of practical importance; he had lost all desire to
do so. Nothing that any landlady could do had a real terror
for him. But to be stopped on the stairs, to be forced to listen
to her trivial, irrelevant gossip, to pestering demands for pay-
ment, threats and complaints, and to rack his brains for excuses,
to prevaricate, to lie— no, rather than that, he would creep
down the stairs like a cat and slip out unseen.
This evening, however, on coming out into the street, he
became acutely aware of his fears.
"I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by
these trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm . . . yes, all
is in a man's hands and he lets it all sUp from cowardice, that's
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