" Apart from the interest Kitty took in this girl's relations with Madame Stahl and with other unknown persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware when their eyes met that she too liked her.

Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth; she might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty.

If her features were criticized separately, she was handsome rather than plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face.

She would have been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her medium height.