Crime and Punishment

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garretin which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towardsK. bridge. He had successfully avoided meeting his landlady on the staircase. His garret wasunder the roof of a high, five-storied house and was more like a cupboard than aroom. The landlady who provided him with garret, dinners, and attendance, livedon 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 manhad a sick, frightened feeling, which made him scowl and feel ashamed. He washopelessly in debt to his landlady, and was afraid of meeting her. This was not because he was cowardly and abject, quite the contrary; but forsome time past he had been in an overstrained irritable condition, verging onhypochondria. He had become so completely absorbed in himself, and isolated fromhis fellows that he dreaded meeting, not only his landlady, but anyone at all. He wascrushed by poverty, but the anxieties of his position had of late ceased to weighupon him. He had given up attending to matters of practical importance; he hadlost 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, irrelevantgossip, to pestering demands for payment, threats and complaints, and to rack hisbrains for excuses, to prevaricate, to lie-no, rather than that, he would creep downthe stairs like a cat and slip out unseen