When she reclined upon a divan or leaned back in an arm-chair there was a suggestion of the odalisque in her attitude; but in her walk there was a short, sharp rhythm; it was firm and despotic like that of a race-horse, and yet light as the fluttering of a bird. She was tall and not too slender--the beauty of her shoulders and bust was so great that it had become famous--her head was small and faultlessly poised upon her neck--her features were not perfectly regular, but how charming was her face! pale, with ripe red lips, and brown hair with a shimmer of gold about the temples and the back of the neck. The cheek-bones were rather too high, the face not quite oval enough; the brow was low; the profile haughty, and delicately modelled. The most remarkable feature of Wjera's face was her eyes. Long in their openings, but usually half-closed and shaded by dark eyelashes, they were as changing in colour as in expression, and there was in them something uncanny--mysterious--no one dared to look full into their depths. Of course she created a sensation in Vienna, and yet she had almost no suitors--they were afraid of her and--she had a history, neither disgraceful nor dishonourable, but yet a history. In St. Petersburg, where she had been with her father, she had been distinguished by the homage of a prince of the blood, and was finally betrothed to him. For a year the betrothal was kept up, and then the tie was suddenly snapped. The world discovered the reason in the fact that Wjera could not consent to a morganatic marriage; her ambition had been defeated. The true significance of the breach the world at large did not divine. Only very few suspected that Wjera had loved the man--so much her inferior in all save rank and birth--with all the fervour and poetic purity that are found in Russian girls alone. She did not see him as he really was, handsome, with a superficial air of distinction, but mentally coarse--alternating between brutish excesses and superstitious penances--at once cynical as a roue and sentimental as a school-miss,--no, she endowed him nobly in her imagination. Of all poets in the world the hearts of young girls are the most highly gifted. There are women whose illusions are so tough that they carry them to their graves undamaged; there are others who voluntarily patch up the rents, made by their understanding in their illusions, in order that an ideal--of which they would perhaps be ashamed if it stood unveiled before them, and to break with which they yet have neither the desire nor the force--may not be without a decent garment to cover it.