As for his sister, she was a character out of a different opera.  I must explain that I had not been acquainted with the Kotlovitches in my childhood and early youth, for my father had been a professor at N., and we had for many years lived away.  When I did make their acquaintance the girl was twenty-two, had left school long before, and had spent two or three years in Moscow with a wealthy aunt who brought her out into society.  When I was introduced and first had to talk to her, what struck me most of all was her rare and beautiful name—­Ariadne.  It suited her so wonderfully!  She was a brunette, very thin, very slender, supple, elegant, and extremely graceful, with refined and exceedingly noble features.  Her eyes were shining, too, but her brother’s shone with a cold sweetness, mawkish as sugar-candy, while hers had the glow of youth, proud and beautiful.  She conquered me on the first day of our acquaintance, and indeed it was inevitable.  My first impression was so overwhelming that to this day I cannot get rid of my illusions; I am still tempted to imagine that nature had some grand, marvellous design when she created that girl.

Ariadne’s voice, her walk, her hat, even her footprints on the sandy bank where she used to angle for gudgeon, filled me with delight and a passionate hunger for life.  I judged of her spiritual being from her lovely face and lovely figure, and every word, every smile of Ariadne’s bewitched me, conquered me and forced me to believe in the loftiness of her soul.  She was friendly, ready to talk, gay and simple in her manners.  She had a poetic belief in God, made poetic reflections about death, and there was such a wealth of varying shades in her spiritual organisation that even her faults seemed in her to carry with them peculiar, charming qualities.  Suppose she wanted a new horse and had no money—­what did that matter?  Something might be sold or pawned, or if the steward swore that nothing could possibly be sold or pawned, the iron roofs might be torn off the lodges and taken to the factory, or at the very busiest time the farm-horses might be driven to the market and sold there for next to nothing.  These unbridled desires reduced the whole household to despair at times, but she expressed them with such refinement that everything was forgiven her; all things were permitted her as to a goddess or to Caesar’s wife.  My love was pathetic and was soon noticed by every one—­my father, the neighbours, and the peasants—­and they all sympathised with me.  When I stood the workmen vodka, they would bow and say:  “May the Kotlovitch young lady be your bride, please God!”

And Ariadne herself knew that I loved her.  She would often ride over on horseback or drive in the char-a-banc to see us, and would spend whole days with me and my father.  She made great friends with the old man, and he even taught her to bicycle, which was his favourite amusement.