“Why do I always begin to feel sad at such moments; explain that mystery, you learned person? I’ve been thinking all my life that I should be goodness knows how pleased at seeing you and recalling everything, and here I somehow don’t feel pleased at all, although I do love you.⁠ ⁠… Ach, heavens! He has my portrait on the wall! Give it here. I remember it! I remember it!”

An exquisite miniature in watercolour of Liza at twelve years old had been sent nine years before to Stepan Trofimovitch from Petersburg by the Drozdovs. He had kept it hanging on his wall ever since.

“Was I such a pretty child? Can that really have been my face?”

She stood up, and with the portrait in her hand looked in the looking-glass.

“Make haste, take it!” she cried, giving back the portrait. “Don’t hang it up now, afterwards. I don’t want to look at it.”