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was screened off by a curtain or a sheet hung on a string.
Behind this curtain could be seen a bed made up on a bench
and a chair. The rough square table of plain wood had been
moved into the middle window. The three windows, which
consisted each of four tiny greenish mildewy panes, gave
little light, and were close shut, so that the room was not
very light and rather stuffy. On the table was a frying pan
with the remains of some fried eggs, a half-eaten piece of
bread, and a small bottle with a few drops of vodka.
A woman of genteel appearance, wearing a cotton gown,
was sitting on a chair by the bed on the left. Her face was
thin and yellow, and her sunken cheeks betrayed at the first
glance that she was ill. But what struck Alyosha most was
the expression in the poor woman’s eyes — a look of sur-
prised inquiry and yet of haughty pride. And while he was
talking to her husband, her big brown eyes moved from one
speaker to the other with the same haughty and question-
ing expression. Beside her at the window stood a young girl,
rather plain, with scanty reddish hair, poorly but very neat-
ly dressed. She looked disdainfully at Alyosha as he came
in. Beside the other bed was sitting another female figure.
She was a very sad sight, a young girl of about twenty, but
hunchback and crippled ‘with withered legs,’ as Alyosha
was told afterwards. Her crutches stood in the corner close
by. The strikingly beautiful and gentle eyes of this poor girl
looked with mild serenity at Alyosha. A man of forty-five
was sitting at the table, finishing the fried eggs. He was
spare, small, and weakly built. He had reddish hair and a
scanty light-coloured beard, very much like a wisp of tow