green eyes seemed to me an unhappy man, so small, so grey. . . .

"'Do try!' I persisted. 'Come, I entreat you!

"The lawyer shook his head and frowned. Evidently I was beginning
to bore him.

"'I know,' he said, 'after my experiment you will say, thank you,
and will call me your saviour; but you see I must think of your
fiancée too. She loves you; your jilting her would make her suffer.
And what a charming creature she is! I envy you.'

"The lawyer sighed, sipped his wine, and began talking of how
charming my Natasha was. He had an extraordinary gift of description.
He could knock you off a regular string of words about a woman's
eyelashes or her little finger. I listened to him with relish.

"'I have seen a great many women in my day,' he said, 'but I give
you my word of honour, I speak as a friend, your Natasha Andreyevna
is a pearl, a rare girl. Of course she has her defects--many of
them, in fact, if you like--but still she is fascinating.'

"And the lawyer began talking of my fiancée's defects. Now I
understand very well that he was talking of women in general, of
their weak points in general, but at the time it seemed to me that
he was talking only of Natasha. He went into ecstasies over her
turn-up nose, her shrieks, her shrill laugh, her airs and graces,
precisely all the things I so disliked in her. All that was, to his
thinking, infinitely sweet, graceful, and feminine.