I looked at Fustov, as though wishing finally to arrive at what induced
him to visit such people... but at that instant there came into the room
a tall girl in a black dress, the elder daughter of Mr. Ratsch, to whom
Fustov had referred.... I perceived the explanation of my friend's
frequent visits.


VII


There is somewhere, I remember, in Shakespeare, something about 'a white
dove in a flock of black crows'; that was just the impression made on me
by the girl, who entered the room. Between the world surrounding her and
herself there seemed to be too little in common; she herself seemed
secretly bewildered and wondering how she had come there. All the
members of Mr. Ratsch's family looked self-satisfied, simple-hearted,
healthy creatures; her beautiful, but already careworn, face bore the
traces of depression, pride and morbidity. The others, unmistakable
plebeians, were unconstrained in their manners, coarse perhaps, but
simple; but a painful uneasiness was manifest in all her indubitably
aristocratic nature. In her very exterior there was no trace of the type
characteristic of the German race; she recalled rather the children of
the south. The excessively thick, lustreless black hair, the hollow,
black, lifeless but beautiful eyes, the low, prominent brow, the
aquiline nose, the livid pallor of the smooth skin, a certain tragic
line near the delicate lips, and in the slightly sunken cheeks,
something abrupt, and at the same time helpless in the movements,
elegance without gracefulness... in Italy all this would not have struck
me as exceptional, but in Moscow, near the Pretchistensky boulevard, it