"And aren't you sorry for them? Aren't you sorry?" Sonia flew at him
again. "Why, I know, you gave your last penny yourself, though you'd
seen nothing of it, and if you'd seen everything, oh dear! And how
often, how often I've brought her to tears! Only last week! Yes, I! Only
a week before his death. I was cruel! And how often I've done it! Ah,
I've been wretched at the thought of it all day!"

Sonia wrung her hands as she spoke at the pain of remembering it.

"You were cruel?"

"Yes, I--I. I went to see them," she went on, weeping, "and father said,
'read me something, Sonia, my head aches, read to me, here's a book.' He
had a book he had got from Andrey Semyonovitch Lebeziatnikov, he lives
there, he always used to get hold of such funny books. And I said, 'I
can't stay,' as I didn't want to read, and I'd gone in chiefly to show
Katerina Ivanovna some collars. Lizaveta, the pedlar, sold me some
collars and cuffs cheap, pretty, new, embroidered ones. Katerina
Ivanovna liked them very much; she put them on and looked at herself
in the glass and was delighted with them. 'Make me a present of them,
Sonia,' she said, 'please do.' '_Please do_,' she said, she wanted them
so much. And when could she wear them? They just reminded her of her old
happy days. She looked at herself in the glass, admired herself, and she
has no clothes at all, no things of her own, hasn't had all these years!
And she never asks anyone for anything; she is proud, she'd sooner give
away everything. And these she asked for, she liked them so much. And I
was sorry to give them. 'What use are they to you, Katerina Ivanovna?' I
said. I spoke like that to her, I ought not to have said that! She gave
me such a look. And she was so grieved, so grieved at my refusing her.
And it was so sad to see.... And she was not grieved for the collars,