and felt all at
once as though a wind were blowing over my soul and blowing away all
the impressions of the day with their dust and dreariness. I saw the
bewitching features of the most beautiful face I have ever met in real
life or in my dreams. Before me stood a beauty, and I recognized that at
the first glance as I should have recognized lightning.

I am ready to swear that Masha--or, as her father called her,
Mashya--was a real beauty, but I don't know how to prove it. It
sometimes happens that clouds are huddled together in disorder on the
horizon, and the sun hiding behind them colors them and the sky with
tints of every possible shade--crimson, orange, gold, lilac, muddy pink;
one cloud is like a monk, another like a fish, a third like a Turk in a
turban. The glow of sunset enveloping a third of the sky gleams on
the cross on the church, flashes on the windows of the manor house, is
reflected in the river and the puddles, quivers on the trees; far, far
away against the background of the sunset, a flock of wild ducks is
flying homewards.... And the boy herding the cows, and the surveyor
driving in his chaise over the dam, and the gentleman out for a walk,
all gaze at the sunset, and every one of them thinks it terribly
beautiful, but no one knows or can say in what its beauty lies.

I was not the only one to think the Armenian girl beautiful. My
grandfather, an old man of seventy, gruff and indifferent to women and
the beauties of nature, looked caressingly at Masha for a full minute,
and asked:

"Is that your daughter, Avert Nazaritch?"

"Yes, she is my daughter," answered the Armenian.

"A fine young lady," said my grandfather approvingly.

An artist would have called the Armenian girl's beauty classical and
severe, it was just that beauty, the contemplation of which--God
knows why!--inspires in one the conviction that one is seeing correct
features; that hair, eyes, nose, mouth, neck, bosom, and every movement
of the young body all go together in one complete harmonious accord in
which nature has not blundered over the smallest line. You fancy for
some reason that the ideally beautiful woman must have such a nose as
Masha's, straight and slightly aquiline, just such great dark eyes, such
long lashes, such a languid glance; you fancy that her black curly hair
and eyebrows go with the soft white tint of her brow and cheeks as
the green reeds go with the quiet stream. Masha's white neck and her
youthful bos