up his
mind to leave the village and to try his luck in one of the big towns,
when, before he was eighteen, something happened to him which entirely
changed the colour of his thoughts and the range of his desires. It was
an ordinary experience enough: he fell in love. He fell in love with
Tatiana, who worked in the starch factory. Tatiana's eyes were grey, her
complexion was white, her features small and delicate, and her hair
a beautiful dark brown with gold lights and black shadows in it; her
movements were quick and her glance keen; she was like a swallow.

It happened when the snows melted and the meadows were flooded; the
first fine day in April. The larks were singing over the plains, which
were beginning to show themselves once more under the melting snow; the
sun shone on the large patches of water, and turned the flooded meadows
in the valley into a fantastic vision. It was on a Sunday after church
that this new thing happened. He had often seen Tatiana before: that day
she was different and new to him. It was as if a bandage had been taken
from his eyes, and at the same moment he realised that Tatiana was a new
Tatiana. He also knew that the old world in which he had lived hitherto
had crumbled to pieces; and that a new world, far brighter and more
wonderful, had been created for him. As for Tatiana, she loved him at
once. There was no delay, no hesitation, no misunderstandings, no doubt:
and at the first not much speech; but first love came to them straight
and swift, with the first sunshine of the spring, as it does to the
birds.

All the spring and summer they kept company and walked out together in
the evenings. When the snows entirely melted and the true spring came,
it came with a rush; in a fortnight's time all the trees except the ash
were green, and the bees boomed round the thick clusters of pear-blossom
and apple-blossom, which shone like snow against the bright azure.
During that time Petrushka and Tatiana walked in the apple orchard
in the evening and they talked to each other in the divinest of all
languages, the language of first love, which is no language at all but a
confused medley and murmur of broken phrases, whisperings, twitterings,
pauses, and silences--a language so wonderful that it cannot be put
down into speech or words, although Shakespeare and the very great poets
translate the spirit of it into music, and the great musicians catch the
echo of it in their song. Then a fortnight l