His body was a poor affair, his legs thin
and uncertain, an incipient stomach causing his waistcoat suddenly to
fall inwards somewhere half-way up his chest, his feet in ill-shapen
boots, and his neck absurdly small inside his high stiff collar. His
stiff collar jutting sharply into his weak chin was perhaps his most
striking feature. Most Russians of his careless habits wore soft collars
or students' shirts that fastened tight about the neck, but this high
white collar was with Markovitch a sign and a symbol, the banner of his
early ambitions; it was the first and last of him. He changed it every
day, it was always high and sharp, gleaming and clean, and it must have
hurt him very much. He wore with it a shabby black tie that ran as far
up the collar as it could go, and there was a sense of pathos and
struggle about this tie as though it were a wild animal trying to escape
over an imprisoning wall. He would stand clutching my stove as though it
assured his safety in a dangerous country; then suddenly he would break
away from it and start careering up and down my room, stopping for an
instant to gaze through my window at the sea and the ships, then off
again, swinging his arms, his anxious eyes searching everywhere for
confirmation of the ambitions that still enflamed him.
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