seen before, came forward and strummed the same fantasia of Liszt; the
pianist gained an encore. He bowed with one hand on the back of the chair,
and after each bow he shook back his hair, precisely like Liszt! At last
after a rather long interval the red cloth over the door on to the platform
stirred and opened wide, and Clara Militch appeared. The room resounded
with applause. With hesitating steps, she moved forward on the platform,
stopped and stood motionless, clasping her large handsome ungloved hands in
front of her, without a courtesy, a bend of the head, or a smile.

She was a girl of nineteen, tall, rather broad-shouldered, but well-built.
A dark face, of a half-Jewish half-gipsy type, small black eyes under thick
brows almost meeting in the middle, a straight, slightly turned-up nose,
delicate lips with a beautiful but decided curve, an immense mass of black
hair, heavy even in appearance, a low brow still as marble, tiny ears ...
the whole face dreamy, almost sullen. A nature passionate, wilful--hardly
good-tempered, hardly very clever, but gifted--was expressed in every
feature.

For some time she did not raise her eyes; but suddenly she started, and
passed over the rows of spectators a glance intent, but not attentive,
absorbed, it seemed, in herself.... 'What tragic eyes she has!' observed
a man sitting behind Aratov, a grey-headed dandy with the face of a Revel
harlot, well known in Moscow as a prying gossip and writer for the papers.
The dandy was an idiot, and meant to say something idiotic ... but he spoke
the truth. Aratov, who from the very moment of Clara's entrance had never
taken his eyes off her, only at that instant recollected that he really had
seen her at the princess's; and not only that he had seen her, but that he
had even noticed that she had several times, with a peculiar insistency,
gazed at him with her dark intent eyes. And now too--or was it his
fancy?--on seeing him in the front row she seemed delighted, seemed to