an dress,
with her head bare and a little shawl flung carelessly on one
shoulder; not a passenger, but I suppose a sister or daughter of the
station-master. She was standing near the carriage window, talking to an
elderly woman who was in the train. Before I had time to realize what
I was seeing, I was suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling I had once
experienced in the Armenian village.

The girl was remarkably beautiful, and that was unmistakable to me and
to those who were looking at her as I was.

If one is to describe her appearance feature by feature, as the practice
is, the only really lovely thing was her thick wavy fair hair, which
hung loose with a black ribbon tied round her head; all the other
features were either irregular or very ordinary. Either from a peculiar
form of coquettishness, or from short-sightedness, her eyes were screwed
up, her nose had an undecided tilt, her mouth was small, her profile was
feebly and insipidly drawn, her shoulders were narrow and undeveloped
for her age--and yet the girl made the impression of being really
beautiful, and looking at her, I was able to feel convinced that the
Russian face does not need strict regularity in order to be lovely; what
is more, that if instead of her turn-up nose the girl had been given a
different one, correct and plastically irreproachable like the Armenian
girl's, I fancy her face would have lost all its charm from the change.

Standing at the window talking, the girl, shrugging at the evening damp,
continually looking round at us, at one moment put her arms akimbo, at
the next raised her hands to her head to straighten her hair, talked,
laughed, while her face at one moment wore an expression of wonder, the
next of horror, and I don't remember a moment when her face and body
were at rest. The whole secret and magic of her beauty lay just in these
tiny, infinitely elegant movements, in her smile, in the play of her
face, in her rapid glances at us, in the combination of the subtle grace
of her movements with her youth, her freshness, the purity of her soul
that sounded in her laugh and voice, and with the weakness we love so
much in children, in birds, in fawns, and in young trees.

It was that butterfly's beauty so in keeping with waltzing, darting
about the garden, laughter and gaiety, and incongruous with serious
thought, grief, and repose; and it seemed as though a gust of wind
blowing over the platform, or a fall of rain, would be enough t