"Why, we have not a sheet of paper in the house," said Bethsaba, whose woman's instinct whispers to her it is her greatest boast when a poet's wife can say that it has been through her that the poet has been faithless to his muse. "We really have not. I had to use my godmother's letter to make my dragon's eye." "Indeed! Is that how you treat your correspondence? That is a good thing to know. I will never write to you then, but, when I have anything to tell you, will rather come myself." "That will be nice." "Or I will take you with me." To this the same response, "That will be nice," did not come. Clinging to Alexander's arm she looked up to him, saying: "You will not let me go, will you?" Zeneida answered for him: "To that we shall not ask Alexander Sergievitch. His business it is when his little wife wants to go visiting to order out the carriage and horses, and to take care of the house in her absence." "But I could not go anywhere if I wished it. Do you not see how I am dressed? It is the Pleskow costume! Alexander tells me it was also the costume of the first Russian Christian, Princess Olga. And I like it so much. Admire this sarafan with its many buttons, the pearl-embroidered povojnyik on my head, my red boots and striped silk stockings!" And with childish _naïveté_ she lifted up her dress to her knees. "How people would stare if I were to appear among them in this costume! I have no other dress; this is what pleases my Alexander to see me in!" She told the truth. The ball-dresses sent her were not her own property yet; she had not accepted the present. Alexander drew his little nestling wife closer to him. "We have become thorough peasant farmers." "Heaven grant that you may remain so!" thought Zeneida to herself. "I fear, however, that some day you will be leaving wife and village, and it will no longer be the pearl-embroidered cap upon your wife's head you will then consider the greatest adornment, but the Phrygian cap you will be running after!"