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"If I am so scared now, what would it be if it somehow came to

pass that I were really going to do it?" he could not help asking

himself as he reached the fourth storey. There his progress was

barred by some porters who were engaged in moving furniture out

of a flat. He knew that the flat had been occupied by a German

clerk in the civil service, and his family. This German was

moving out then, and so the fourth floor on this staircase would

be untenanted except by the old woman. "That's a good thing

anyway," he thought to himself, as he rang the bell of the old

woman's flat. The bell gave a faint tinkle as though it were made

of tin and not of copper. The little flats in such houses always

have bells that ring like that. He had forgotten the note of that

bell, and now its peculiar tinkle seemed to remind him of

something and to bring it clearly before him.... He started, his

nerves were terribly overstrained by now.