V
I rang for my maid, Katja, a good creature, ugly beyond words—and gladly chosen by me on that account—and I told her that she was to undress me for I was going to bed. While she was unfastening my dress I could hear her muttering: “If it were me, I should not go to bed. If it were me, I should put on my diamonds and my scarlet chiffon gown; I should take a good bottle of vitriol in my pocket, and go and see what they were up to.”
“Katja, what are you mumbling? Do you mean to say that you—that you think I ought to go—?”
“Of course,” she cried, and her small squinting eyes shot forth, to the right and left, fierce, divergent flashes of indignation. “Why should my lady not go?”
Why should I not, indeed? Had I not the right—nay, the duty—to follow Vassili? Had I not most solemnly promised so to do, in the little church on the steppes a year ago? “Follow him!” With what tremulous joy had I repeated after the priest those two words of tenacity and submission. Had they no application to the Hermitage restaurant?
“Perhaps I might venture to go,” I murmured, “but, Katja, do not other women always have rouge and powder to put on when they go out? I have nothing.”
“Nothing but your eighteen years, madame,” replied Katja.
She dressed me in the low-necked scarlet chiffon gown. She drew on my flame-colored stockings, and my crimson shoes. On my head she placed the diamond and ruby tiara, and about my shoulders she wound a red and gold scarf which looked like a snake of fire.
“Alas, Katja!” I sighed as I looked at myself in the mirror; “what would my mother say if she were to see me like this? What do I look like?”