Vera Nikolaevna was not like the common run of Russian girls; there was the stamp of something special upon her. I was struck from the first minute by the extraordinary repose of all her movements and remarks. She seemed free from any sort of disturbance or agitation; she answered simply and intelligently, and listened attentively. The expression of her face was sincere and truthful as a child’s, but a little cold and immobile, though not dreamy. She was rarely gay, and not in the way other girls are; the serenity of an innocent heart shone out in everything about her, and cheered one more than any gaiety. She was not tall, and had a very good figure, rather slender; she had soft, regular features, a lovely smooth brow, light golden hair, a straight nose, like her mother’s, and rather full lips; her dark grey eyes looked out somewhat too directly from under soft, upward-turned eyelashes. Her hands were small, and not very pretty; one never sees hands like hers on people of talent … and, as a fact, Vera Nikolaevna had no special talents. Her voice rang out clear as a child of seven’s. I was presented to her mother at my cousin’s ball, and a few days later I called on them for the first time. Madame Eltsov was a very strange woman, a woman of character, of strong will and concentration. She had a great influence on me; I at once respected her and feared her. Everything with her was done on a principle, and she had educated her daughter too on a principle, though she did not interfere with her freedom. Her daughter loved her and trusted her blindly. Madame Eltsov had only to give her a book, and say--‘Don’t read that page,’ she would prefer to skip the preceding page as well, and would certainly never glance at the page interdicted. But Madame Eltsov too had her _idées fixes_, her fads. She was mortally afraid, for instance, of anything that might work upon the imagination. And so her daughter reached the age of seventeen without ever having read a novel or a poem, while in Geography, History, and even Natural History, she would often put me to shame, graduate as I was, and a graduate, as you know, not by any means low down on the list either. I used to try and argue with Madame Eltsov about her fad, though it was difficult to draw her into conversation; she was very silent. She simply shook her head. ‘You tell me,’ she said at last, ‘that reading poetry is _both_ useful _and_ pleasant.… I consider one must make one’s choice early in life; _either_ the useful _or_ the pleasant, and abide by it once for all. I, too, tried at one time to unite the two.… That’s impossible, and leads to ruin or vulgarity.’