The girl was remarkably beautiful, and that was unmistaka-
ble to me and to those who were looking at her as I was.
If one is to describe her appearance feature by feature, as the
practice is, the only really lovely thing was her thick wavy fair
hair, which hung loose with a black ribbon tied round her head;
all the other features were either irregular or very ordinary. Ei-
ther from a peculiar form of coquettishness, or from short-
sightedness, her eyes were screwed up, her nose had an unde-
cided tilt, her mouth was small, her profile was feebly and insip-
idly drawn, her shoulders were narrow and undeveloped for her
age -- and yet the girl made the impression of being really beau-
tiful, and looking at her, I was able to feel convinced that the
Russian face does not need strict regularity in order to be lovely;
what is more, that if instead of her turn-up nose the girl had
been given a different one, correct and plastically irreproachable
like the Armenian girl's, I fancy her face would have lost all its
charm from the change.
Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the
evening damp, continually looking round at us, at one moment
put her arms akimbo, at the next raised her hands to her head to
straighten her hair, talked, laughed, while her face at one mo-
ment wore an expression of wonder, the next of horror, and I
don't remember a moment when her face and body were at rest.
The whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these tiny,
infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her
face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the subtle
grace of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the purity
of her soul that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with the
weakness we love so much in children, in birds, in fawns, and in
young trees.
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