Clementine sits down opposite Aleksandra, as far from her as possible, and pays her no attention whatsoever. She’s bundled in her cape and lost in her own thoughts. Aleksandra, by contrast, observes her with curiosity whenever the streetlights allow. Her clothing is most unusual; the cloak made of scraps is clearly secondhand. Clementine crosses her legs, and Aleksandra sees that under her dress, she’s wearing tight long johns down to her ankles, like puttees.

The carriage heads southeast, toward the industrial part of St. Petersburg. It picks up speed, despite the narrowness of the streets, and leaves the city center behind.

Clementine is fully absorbed putting her thoughts in order. But when the carriage stops on a brightly lit corner, she notices Aleksandra scrutinizing her—Aleksandra’s thinking the same thing she thought when Clementine got into the carriage, Another one of Giorgi’s lady friends, men really are good for nothing.

“What are you looking at, young lady? What do you see? You like my cloak? I made it myself. And look at my dress.”

Clementine unties the neck of her cloak and opens it slowly. In daylight, we’d be able to see that Clementine is wearing the dress Anna Karenina wore thirty years ago when she attended the concert where Madame Kartasova insulted her from the adjacent box, publicly humiliating her—the same insult that Sergei is reliving this very night.

The dress is one of many that Karenina’s pseudo mother-in-law (Vronsky’s mother), the Countess Vronskaya, donated to charity in a fit of wicked revenge, hoping women of the night would use them. When Clementine was let out of jail, they gave it to her because they’d “lost” the one she was wearing when she was admitted, a dress notable for its craftsmanship, in both its cut and its stitching, which some jerk took as a gift for his wife, daughter, or lover.

Karenina’s dress is still magnificent, but not as much as it was decades earlier. Made in Paris especially for her, heavy velvet and light silk cut to her size and exact specifications, we won’t worry about its original color, Tolstoy doesn’t specify, and anyway, it would be impossible to recognize in its original state. All we know is that it was a light color. Something between cream and lilac, but most likely a pale burgundy faded over time, a dusty pink that stands out from the colors that are all the rage in St. Petersburg this season. The dress has a low neckline; it reveals the shoulders and hugs the waist with panels of silk that were, and still are, a paler tone. Clementine doesn’t wear it like Anna, with a shawl that sets off her face, but with a sort of hat made from strips of hide that frame her face and cover her neck, throat, and shoulders.