as timid and luckless as he. As they reach Nastenka's door, he asks if he will ever see her again. Before she can answer, he adds that he will be at the spot they met tomorrow anyway just so he can relive this one happy moment in his lonely life. She agrees, stating she can't forbid him not to come, and she has to be there anyway. The girl would tell him her story and be with him, provided that talking does not lead to romance. She is as lonely as the narrator. Second Night On their second meeting, Nastenka seeks to find out more about him. He tells her that he has no history because he has spent his life utterly alone. When she presses him to continue, he suggests that he is of the type of the "dreamer". "'The dreamer'", he explains, "is not a human being, but a creature of an intermediate sort." He gives a long speech (in a style that anticipates that of the Underground Man in Notes from Underground), about his longing for companionship, leading Nastenka to comment "...you talk as if you were reading from a book". He begins to tell his story in the third person, calling himself "the hero". This "hero" is happy at the hour when all work ends and people walk about. He references Vasily Zhukovsky and mentions "The Goddess of Fancy". He dreams of everything, from befriending poets to having a place in the winter with a girl by his side. He says that the dreariness of everyday life kills people, while in his dreams he can make his life as he wishes it to be. At the end of his moving speech, Nastenka sympathetically assures him that she will be his friend. Nastenka's Story Nastenka tells the narrator her story. She grew up with a strict grandmother, who gave Nastenka a largely sheltered upbringing. Her grandmother's pension being too small, they rent a room in their house. When their first lodger dies, the grandmother rents to a younger man. The young man begins a silent courtship with Nastenka, giving her books so that she may develop a reading habit. She takes a liking to the novels of Sir Walter Scott and Aleksandr Pushkin. The young man invites Nastenka and her grandmother to a performance of The Barber of Seville. On the night that the young lodger is