He stood on the threshold amazed,
endeavouring to recognize Sarudine.
"Hallo! Pavel Lvovitsch! What brings you here?" cried Sarudine, as,
crimson with annoyance, he advanced to greet him.
The newcomer entered in hesitating fashion, and the eyes of all were
fixed on his dazzlingly white shoes picking their way through the beer-
bottles, corks and cigarette-ends. So white and neat and scented was
he, that, in all these clouds of smoke, and amid all these flushed,
drunken fellows, he might have been likened to a lily in the marsh, had
he not looked so frail and worn-out, and if his features had not been
so puny, nor his teeth so decayed under his scanty, red moustache.
"Where have you come from? Have you been away a long while from
Pitjer?" [Footnote: A slang term for St. Petersburg.] said Sarudine,
somewhat flurried, as he feared that "Pitjer" was not exactly the word
which he ought to have used.
"I only got here yesterday," said the gentleman in white, in a
determined tone, though his voice sounded like the suppressed crowing
of a cock. "My comrades," said Sarudine, introducing the others.
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