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.

But she was not likely to be attractive to men.