One day, at the theatre (Motchaloff was then at the height of his fame, and Lavretzky never missed a performance), he saw a young girl in a box of the _bel-etage_,--and, although no woman ever passed his surly figure without causing his heart to quiver, it never yet had beaten so violently. With her elbows resting on the velvet of the box, the young girl sat motionless; alert, young life sparkled in every feature of her pretty, round, dark-skinned face; an elegant mind was expressed in the beautiful eyes which gazed attentively and softly from beneath slender brows, in the swift smile of her expressive lips, in the very attitude of her head, her arms, her neck; she was charmingly dressed. Beside her sat a wrinkled, sallow woman, forty-five years of age, with a toothless smile on her constrainedly-anxious and empty countenance, and in the depths of the box an elderly man was visible, wearing an ample coat and a tall neckcloth, with an expression of feeble stateliness and a certain obsequious suspicion in his little eyes, with dyed moustache and side-whiskers, an insignificant, huge forehead, and furrowed cheeks,--a retired General, by all the signs. Lavretzky could not take his eyes from the young girl who had startled him; all at once, the door of the box opened, and Mikhalevitch entered. The appearance of that man, almost his sole acquaintance in all Moscow,--his appearance in the company of the only young girl who had engrossed his whole attention, seemed to Lavretzky strange and significant. As he continued to gaze at the box, he noticed that all the persons in it treated Mikhalevitch like an old friend. The performance on the stage ceased to interest Lavretzky; Motchaloff himself, although that evening he was "in high feather," did not produce upon him the customary impression. In one very pathetic passage, Lavretzky involuntarily glanced at his beauty: she was bending her whole body forward, her cheeks were aflame; under the influence of his persistent gaze, her eyes, which were riveted on the stage, turned slowly, and rested upon him.... All night long, those eyes flitted before his vision. At last, the artificially erected dam had given way: he trembled and burned, and on the following day he betook himself to Mikhalevitch. From him he learned, that the beauty's name was Varvara Pavlovna Korobyn; that the old man and woman who had sat with her in the box were her father and mother, and that he himself, Mikhalevitch, had made their acquaintance a year previously, during his stay in the suburbs of Moscow, "on contract service" (as tutor) with Count N. The enthusiast expressed himself in the most laudatory manner concerning Varvara Pavlovna--"My dear fellow," he exclaimed, with the impetuous harmony in his voice which was peculiar to him,--"that young girl is an amazing, a talented being, an artist in the genuine sense of the word, and extremely amiable to boot."--Perceiving from Lavretzky's question