out meeting anyone in the
corridor, on the stairs, or down below, he darted out into the garden.
It was a grey day, with a low-hanging sky and a damp breeze that blew in
waves over the tops of the grass and made the trees rustle. A whiff of
coal, tar, and tallow was borne along from the yard, but the noise and
rattling in the factory was fainter than usual at that time of day.
Nejdanov looked round sharply to see if anyone was about and made
straight for the old apple tree that had first attracted his attention
when he had looked out of the little window of his room on the day of
his arrival. The whole of its trunk was evergrown with dry moss, its
bare, rugged branches, sparsely covered with reddish leaves, rose
crookedly, like some old arms held up in supplication. Nejdanov stepped
firmly on to the dark soil beneath the tree and pulled out the object he
had taken from the table drawer. He looked up intently at the windows of
the little house. "If somebody were to see me now, perhaps I wouldn't
do it," he thought. But no human being was to be seen anywhere--everyone
seemed dead or turned away from him, leaving him to the mercy of fate.
Only the muffled hum and roar of the factory betrayed any signs of life;
and overhead a fine, keen, chilly rain began falling.

Nejdanov gazed up through the crooked branches of the tree under
which he was standing at the grey, cloudy sky looking down upon him so
unfeelingly. He yawned and lay down. "There's nothing else to be done.
I can't go back to St. Petersburg, to prison," he thought. A kind of
pleasant heaviness spread all over his body. .. He threw away his cap,
took up the revolver, and pulled the trigger.

Something struck him instantly, but with no very great violence. .. He
was lying on his back trying to make out what had happened to him and
how it was that he had just seen Tatiana. He tried to call her... but
a peculiar numbness had taken possession of him and curious dark green
spots were whirling about all over him--in his eyes, over his head, in
his brain--and some frightfully heavy, dull weight seemed to press him
to the earth forever.

Nejdanov did really get a glimpse of Tatiana. At the moment when he
pulled the trigger she had looked out of a window and caught sight of
him standing under the tree. She had hardly time to ask herself what he
was doing there in the rain without a hat, when he rolled to the ground
like a sheaf of corn. She did not hear the shot--it was