speaker
was a young man with an immense shock of hair, wearing a Russian
jerkin, and that a pockmarked woman in a woolen gown, without
collar or cuffs, was sitting on the sofa. His brother was not to
be seen. Konstantin felt a sharp pang at his heart at the
thought of the strange company in which his brother spent his
life. No one had heard him, and Konstantin, taking off his
galoshes, listened to what the gentleman in the jerkin was
saying. He was speaking of some enterprise.

"Well, the devil flay them, the privileged classes," his
brother's voice responded, with a cough. "Masha! get us some
supper and some wine if there's any left; or else go and get
some."

The woman rose, came out from behind the screen, and saw
Konstantin.

"There's some gentleman, Nikolay Dmitrievitch," she said.

"Whom do you want?" said the voice of Nikolay Levin, angrily.

"It's I," answered Konstantin Levin, coming forward into the
light.

"Who's _I_?" Nikolay's voice said again, still more angrily. He
could be heard getting up hurriedly, stumbling against something,
and Levin saw, facing him in the doorway, the big, scared eyes,
and the huge, thin, stooping figure of his brother, so familiar,
and yet astonishing in its weirdness and sickliness.

He was even thinner than three years before, when Konstantin
Levin had seen him last. He was wearing a short coat, and his
hands and big bones seemed huger than ever. His hair had grown
thinner, the same straight mustaches hid his lips, the same eyes
gazed strangely and naively at his visitor.

"Ah, Kostya!" he exclaimed suddenly, recognizing his brother, and
his eyes lit up with joy. But the same second he looked round at
the young man, and gave the nervous jerk of his head and neck
that Konstantin knew so well, as if his neckband hurt him; and a
quite different expression, wild, suffering, and cruel, rested
on his emaciated face.

"I wrote to you and Sergey Ivanovitch both that I don't know you
and don't want to know you. What is it you want?"

He was not at all the same as Konstantin had been fancying him.
The worst and most tiresome part of his character, what made all
relations with him so difficult, had been forgotten by Konstantin
Levin when he thought of him, and now, when he saw his face, and
especially that nervous twitching of his head, he remembered it
all.

"I didn't want to see you for anything," he answered timidly.
"I've simply come to see you."

His brot