you!”
“I’ll go, sweetie!”
And he darted down into the saloon below. Raskolnikov moved on.
“I say, sir,” the girl shouted after him.
“What is it?”
She hesitated.
“I’ll always be pleased to spend an hour with you, kind gentleman, but now I feel shy. Give me six kopecks for a drink, there’s a nice young man!”
Raskolnikov gave her what came first—fifteen kopecks.
“Ah, what a good-natured gentleman!”
“What’s your name?”
“Ask for Duclida.”
“Well, that’s too much,” one of the women observed, shaking her head at Duclida. “I don’t know how you can ask like that. I believe I should drop with shame. …”
Raskolnikov looked curiously at the speaker. She was a pockmarked wench of thirty, covered with bruises, with her upper lip swollen. She made her criticism