ithout the quivering
of a single muscle, to look straight in the face of death; who are
capable for the sake of an idea of bearing unconceivable privations and
sufferings, equal to torture; but then, these people are lost before
the haughtiness of a doorman; shrink from the yelling of a laundress;
while into a police station they enter in an insufferable and timid
distress. And precisely such a one was Lichonin. On the following day
(yesterday it had been impossible on account of a holiday and the
lateness), having gotten up very early and recollecting that to-day he
had to take care of Liubka's passport, he felt just as bad as when in
former times, as a high-school boy, he went to an examination, knowing
that he would surely fall through. His head ached, while his arms and
legs somehow seemed another's; in addition, a drizzling and seemingly
dirty rain had been falling on the street since morning. "Always, now,
when there's some unpleasantness in store, there is inevitably a rain
falling," reflected Lichonin, dressing slowly.

It was not especially far from his street to the Yamskaya, not more
than two-thirds of a mile. In general, he was not infrequently in those
parts, but he had never had occasion to go there in the daytime; and on
the way it seemed to him all the time that every one he met, every
cabby and policeman, was looking at him with curiosity, with reproach,
or with disdain, as though surmising the destination of his journey. As
always on a nasty and muggy morning, all the faces that met his eyes
seemed pale, ugly, with monstrously underlined defects. Scores of times
he imagined all that he would say in the beginning at the house; and
later at the station house; and every time the outcome was different.
Angry at himself for this premature rehearsal, he would at times stop
himself:

"Ah! You mustn't think, you mustn't presuppose what you're going to
say. It always turns out far better when it's done right off..."

And then again imaginary dialogues would run through his head:

"You have no right to hold this girl against her wish."

"Yes, but let her herself give notice about going away."

"I act at her instruction."

"All right; but how can you prove this?" and again he would mentally
cut himself short.

The city common began, on which cows were browsing; a board sidewalk
along a fence; shaky little bridges over little brooklets and ditches.
Then he turned into the Yamskaya. In the house of Anna Ma