ight, and, as Ognev long remembered, coils
of mist that looked like phantoms slowly but perceptibly followed
one another across the avenue. The moon stood high above the garden,
and below it transparent patches of mist were floating eastward.
The whole world seemed to consist of nothing but black silhouettes
and wandering white shadows. Ognev, seeing the mist on a moonlight
August evening almost for the first time in his life, imagined he
was seeing, not nature, but a stage effect in which unskilful
workmen, trying to light up the garden with white Bengal fire, hid
behind the bushes and let off clouds of white smoke together with
the light.

When Ognev reached the garden gate a dark shadow moved away from
the low fence and came towards him.

"Vera Gavrilovna!" he said, delighted. "You here? And I have been
looking everywhere for you; wanted to say good-bye. . . . Good-bye;
I am going away!"

"So early? Why, it's only eleven o'clock."

"Yes, it's time I was off. I have a four-mile walk and then my
packing. I must be up early to-morrow."

Before Ognev stood Kuznetsov's daughter Vera, a girl of one-and-twenty,
as usual melancholy, carelessly dressed, and attractive. Girls who
are dreamy and spend whole days lying down, lazily reading whatever
they come across, who are bored and melancholy, are usually careless
in their dress. To those of them who have been endowed by nature
with taste and an instinct of beauty, the slight carelessness adds
a special charm. When Ognev later on remembered her, he could not
picture pretty Verotchka except in a full blouse which was crumpled
in deep folds at the belt and yet did not touch her waist; without
her hair done up high and a curl that had come loose from it on her
forehead; without the knitted red shawl with ball fringe at the
edge which hung disconsolately on Vera's shoulders in the evenings,
like a flag on a windless day, and in the daytime lay about, crushed
up, in the hall near the men's hats or on a box in the dining-room,
where the old cat did not hesitate to sleep on it. This shawl and
the folds of her blouse suggested a feeling of freedom and laziness,
of good-nature and sitting at home. Perhaps because Vera attracted
Ognev he saw in every frill and button something warm, naive, cosy,
something nice and poetical, just what is lacking in cold, insincere
women that have no instinct for beauty.

Verotchka had a good figure, a regular profile, and beautiful curly
hair. O