That's a great thing," Sergey Ivanovitch said to himself, feeling at the same time that this consideration had not the slightest importance for him personally, but would only perhaps detract from his romantic character in the eyes of others.

" But apart from that, however much I searched, I should never find anything to say against my feeling.

If I were choosing by considerations of suitability alone, I could not have found anything better.

" However many women and girls he thought of whom he knew, he could not think of a girl who united to such a degree all, positively all, the qualities he would wish to see in his wife.