They decided at once that they would dress Sasha as a Geisha. The sisters kept their idea in the strictest secrecy and did not even tell Larissa or their brother. Liudmilla herself made the costume from the design on the label of Korilopsis: it was a long full dress of yellow silk on red velvet; she sewed a bright pattern on the dress, consisting of large flowers of fantastic shape. The girls made a fan out of thin Japanese paper, with figures, on bamboo sticks, and a parasol out of thin rose silk with a bamboo handle. They bought rose coloured stockings and wooden slippers with little ridges underneath. The artist Liudmilla painted a Geisha mask: it was a yellowish but agreeable thin face, with a slight motionless smile, oblique eyes and a small, narrow mouth. They had only to get the wig from Peterburg---black, with smooth, arranged hair. Time was needed to fit the costume and Sasha could only come in snatches and not every day. But they managed it. Sasha ran off at night by way of the window, when Kokovkina was asleep. It went off successfully. Varvara also was preparing for the masked ball. She brought a stupid looking mask, and she didn't worry about costume--she dressed herself as a cook. She hung a skimmer at her waist and put a white cap on her head, her arms were bare to the elbow and very heavily rouged--a cook straight from the hearth--and the costume was ready. If she got the prize, so much the better; if she didn't, she could get on without it. Grushina dressed herself as Diana. Varvara laughed and asked: "Are you going to put on a collar?" "Why a collar?" asked Grushina in astonishment. "I thought you were going to dress up as the dog, Dianka," explained Varvara. "What a notion!" replied Grushina with a laugh, "not Dianka, but the Goddess, Diana." Varvara and Grushina dressed for the ball at Grushina's house. Grushina's costume was excessively scanty: bare arms and shoulders, bare neck, bare chest, her legs bare to the knee, light slippers, and a light dress of linen with a red border against the white flesh--it was quite a short dress, but broad with many folds. Varvara said with a smile: "You aren't over-dressed!" Grushina replied with a vulgar wink: "It'll attract the boys!" "But why so many folds?" asked Varvara. "I can fill them with sweets for my devilkins," explained Grushina. All of Grushina that was so boldly displayed was handsome--but what contradictions. On her skin were flea-bites, her manners were coarse and her talk was insufferably banal. Once more abused bodily beauty! * * * * * Peredonov thought that the masked ball was planned on purpose to trap him. But he went, not in costume but in a frock coat, to see for himself how plots are devised. * * * * *