All that was left of my month’s pay went on this magnificent purchase; at the end of the month I should have either to go without my evening meal and my visits to the café or else to borrow money. But at this moment that was a matter of indifference to me; if anything, I was actually glad that my foolishness was going to cost me dear, for all the time I felt a kind of malicious desire to punish myself thoroughly, blunderer that I was, to make myself pay through the nose for my twofold doltishness.
