Pagina 590 di 1294

"What does this mean?" thought Raskolnikov uneasily.

Zametov seemed taken aback, but not very much so.

"Why, it was at your rooms we met yesterday," he said easily.

"Then I have been spared the trouble. All last week he was

begging me to introduce him to you. Porfiry and you have sniffed

each other out without me. Where is your tobacco?"

Porfiry Petrovitch was wearing a dressing-gown, very clean linen,

and trodden-down slippers. He was a man of about five and thirty,

short, stout even to corpulence, and clean shaven. He wore his

hair cut short and had a large round head, particularly prominent

at the back. His soft, round, rather snub-nosed face was of a

sickly yellowish colour, but had a vigorous and rather ironical

expression. It would have been good-natured except for a look in

the eyes, which shone with a watery, mawkish light under almost

white, blinking eyelashes. The expression of those eyes was

strangely out of keeping with his somewhat womanish figure, and

gave it something far more serious than could be guessed at first

sight.