The room was close, but she had not opened the window; a stench rose from the staircase, but the door on to the stairs was not closed.

From the inner rooms clouds of tobacco smoke floated in, she kept coughing, but did not close the door.

The youngest child, a girl of six, was asleep, sitting curled up on the floor with her head on the sofa.

A boy a year older stood crying and shaking in the corner, probably he had just had a beating.

Beside him stood a girl of nine years old, tall and thin, wearing a thin and ragged chemise with an ancient cashmere pelisse flung over her bare shoulders, long outgrown and barely reaching her knees.
Her arm, as thin as a stick, was round her brother's neck.