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He raised his brooding eyes to her and suddenly noticed that he was sitting down while she was all the while standing before him. Why are you standing? Sit down, he said in a changed voice, gentle and friendly. She sat down. He looked kindly and almost compassionately at her. How thin you are! What a hand! Quite transparent, like a dead hand. He took her hand. Sonia smiled faintly. I have always been like that, she said. Even when you lived at home? Yes. Of course, you were, he added abruptly and the expression of his face and the sound of his voice changed again suddenly. He looked round him once more. You rent this room from the Kapernaumovs? Yes. They live there, through that door? Yes. They have another room like this. All in one room? Yes. I should be afraid in your room at night, he observed gloomily. They are very good people, very kind, answered Sonia, who still seemed bewildered, and all the furniture, everything everything is theirs. And they are very kind and the children, too, often come to see me. They all stammer, dont they? Yes. He stammers and hes lame. And his wife, too. Its not exactly that she stammers, but she cant speak plainly. She is a very kind woman. And he used to be a house serf. And there are seven children and its only the eldest one that stammers and the others are simply ill but they dont stammer. But where did you hear about them? she added with some surprise. Your father told me, then. He told me all about you. And how you went out at six oclock and came back at nine and how Katerina Ivanovna knelt down by your bed. Sonia was confused. I fancied I saw him to-day, she whispered hesitatingly. Whom? Father. I was walking in the street, out there at the corner, about ten oclock and he seemed to be walking in front. It looked just like him. I wanted to go to Katerina Ivanovna. |
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