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Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other people called her

"Mademoiselle Varenka." 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. But she was not likely to be attractive to men.

She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without

fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover, she

would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of just

what Kitty had too much of-of the suppressed fire of vitality,

and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.