of turning out badly, therefore, the episode of the glove served only
to set me at my ease among the dreaded circle of guests, and to make
me cease to feel oppressed with shyness. The sufferings of shy people
proceed only from the doubts which they feel concerning the opinions
of their fellows. No sooner are those opinions expressed (whether
flattering or the reverse) than the agony disappears.

How lovely Sonetchka looked when she was dancing a quadrille as my
vis-a-vis, with, as her partner, the loutish Prince Etienne! How
charmingly she smiled when, en chaine, she accorded me her hand! How
gracefully the curls, around her head nodded to the rhythm, and how
naively she executed the jete assemble with her little feet!

In the fifth figure, when my partner had to leave me for the other
side and I, counting the beats, was getting ready to dance my solo, she
pursed her lips gravely and looked in another direction; but her fears
for me were groundless. Boldly I performed the chasse en avant and
chasse en arriere glissade, until, when it came to my turn to move
towards her and I, with a comic gesture, showed her the poor glove with
its crumpled fingers, she laughed heartily, and seemed to move her tiny
feet more enchantingly than ever over the parquetted floor.

How well I remember how we formed the circle, and how, without
withdrawing her hand from mine, she scratched her little nose with
her glove! All this I can see before me still. Still can I hear the
quadrille from "The Maids of the Danube" to which we danced that night.

The second quadrille, I danced with Sonetchka herself; yet when we went
to sit down together during the interval, I felt overcome with shyness
and as though I had nothing to say. At last, when my silence had lasted