and I would think to myself: “Why was she not born a lady — she with her blue eyes, beautiful fair hair, and magnificent bust? How splendid she would look if she were sitting in a drawing-room and dressed in a cap with pink ribbons and a silk gown — not one like Mimi’s, but one like the gown which I saw the other day on the Tverski Boulevard!” Yes, she would work at the embroidery-frame, and I would sit and look at her in the mirror, and be ready to do whatsoever she wanted — to help her on with her mantle or to hand her food.

As for Basil’s drunken face and horrid figure in the scanty coat with the red shirt showing beneath it, well, in his every gesture, in his every movement of his back, I seemed always to see signs of the humiliating chastisements which he had undergone.