She swung round on the stool and faced the light.  It was afternoon—­an autumn afternoon in Russia—­and the pink light made the very best of a face which was not beautiful at all, never could be beautiful—­a face about which even the owner, a woman, could have no possible illusion.  It was broad and powerful, with eyes too far apart, forehead too broad and low, jaw too heavy, mouth too determined.  The eyes were almond-shaped, and slightly sloping downward and inward—­deep, passionate blue eyes set in a Mongolian head.  It was the face of a woman who could, morally speaking, make mincemeat of nine young men out of ten.  But she could not have made one out of the number love her.  For it has been decreed that women shall win love—­except in some happy exceptions—­by beauty only.  The same unwritten law has it that a man’s appearance does not matter—­a law much appreciated by some of us, and duly canonized by not a few.

The girl was evidently listening.  She glanced at a little golden clock on the mantel-piece, and then at the open window.  She rose—­she was short, and somewhat broadly built—­and went to the window.

“He will be back,” she said to herself, “in a few minutes now.”

She raised her hand to her forehead, and pressed back her hair with a little movement of impatience, expressive, perhaps, of a great suspense.  She stood idly drumming on the window-sill for a few moments; then, with a quick little sigh, she went back to the piano.  As she moved she gave a jerk of the head from time to time, as schoolgirls who have too much hair are wont to do.  The reason of this nervous movement was a wondrous plait of gold reaching far below her waist.  Catrina Lanovitch almost worshipped her own hair.  She knew without any doubt that not one woman in ten thousand could rival her in this feminine glory—­knew it as indubitably as she knew that she was plain.  The latter fact she faced with an unflinching, cold conviction which was not feminine at all.  She did not say that she was hideous, for the sake of hearing a contradiction or a series of saving clauses.  She never spoke of it to any one.  She had grown up with it, and as it was beyond doubt, so was it outside discussion.  All her femininity seemed to be concentrated, all her vanity centred, on her hair.  It was her one pride, perhaps her one hope.  Women have been loved for their voices.  Catrina’s voice was musical enough, but it was deep and strong.  It was passionate, tender if she wished, fascinating; but it was not lovable.  If the voice may win love, why not the hair?

Catrina despised all men but one—­that one she worshipped.  She lived night and day with one great desire, beside which heaven and hell were mere words.  Neither the hope of the one nor the fear of the other in any way touched or affected her desire.  She wanted to make Paul Alexis love her; and, womanlike, she clung to the one womanly charm that was hers—­the wonderful golden hair.  Pathetic, aye, pathetic—­with a grin behind the pathos, as there ever is.