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I put six roubles in the letter, sealed it up, and asked Apollon to take it
to Simonov. When he learned that there was money in the letter, Apollon
became more respectful and agreed to take it. Towards evening I went out
for a walk. My head was still aching and giddy after yesterday. But as
evening came on and the twilight grew denser, my impressions and,
following them, my thoughts, grew more and more different and confused.
Something was not dead within me, in the depths of my heart and
conscience it would not die, and it showed itself in acute depression. For
the most part I jostled my way through the most crowded business streets,
along Myeshtchansky Street, along Sadovy Street and in Yusupov Garden.
I always liked particularly sauntering along these streets in the dusk,
just when there were crowds of working people of all sorts going home
from their daily work, with faces looking cross with anxiety. What I liked
was just that cheap bustle, that bare prose. On this occasion the jostling
of the streets irritated me more than ever, I could not make out what was
wrong with me, I could not find the clue, something seemed rising up
continually in my soul, painfully, and refusing to be appeased. I returned
home completely upset, it was just as though some crime were lying on
my conscience.
The thought that Liza was coming worried me continually. It seemed
queer to me that of all my recollections of yesterday this tormented me, as
it were, especially, as it were, quite separately. Everything else I had quite
succeeded in forgetting by the evening; I dismissed it all and was still
perfectly satisfied with my letter to Simonov. But on this point I was not
satisfied at all. It was as though I were worried only by Liza. "What if she
comes," I thought incessantly, "well, it doesn't matter, let her come!
H'm! it's horrid that she should see, for instance, how I live. Yesterday I
seemed such a hero to her, while now, h'm! It's horrid, though, that I have
let myself go so, the room looks like a beggar's. And I brought myself to go
out to dinner in such a suit! And my American leather sofa with the
stuffing sticking out. And my dressing-gown, which will not cover me,
such tatters, and she will see all this and she will see Apollon. That beast
is certain to insult her. He will fasten upon her in order to be rude to me.
And I, of course, shall be panic-stricken as usual, I shall begin bowing
and scraping before her and pulling my dressing-gown round me, I shall
begin smiling, telling lies. Oh, the beastliness! And it isn't the
beastliness of it that matters most! There is something more important, more
loathsome, viler! Yes, viler! And to put on that dishonest lying mask
again! ..."
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