“Come, there is no need to be modest,” interrupted a lady near him.  “We have seen your photograph.  Not ugly, indeed!  You were a handsome fellow.”

“Handsome, if you like.  That does not matter.  When my love for her was at its strongest, on the last day of the carnival, I was at a ball at the provincial marshal’s, a good-natured old man, rich and hospitable, and a court chamberlain.  The guests were welcomed by his wife, who was as good-natured as himself.  She was dressed in puce-coloured velvet, and had a diamond diadem on her forehead, and her plump, old white shoulders and bosom were bare like the portraits of Empress Elizabeth, the daughter of Peter the Great.

“It was a delightful ball.  It was a splendid room, with a gallery for the orchestra, which was famous at the time, and consisted of serfs belonging to a musical landowner.  The refreshments were magnificent, and the champagne flowed in rivers.  Though I was fond of champagne I did not drink that night, because without it I was drunk with love.  But I made up for it by dancing waltzes and polkas till I was ready to drop—­of course, whenever possible, with Varinka.  She wore a white dress with a pink sash, white shoes, and white kid gloves, which did not quite reach to her thin pointed elbows.  A disgusting engineer named Anisimov robbed me of the mazurka with her—­to this day I cannot forgive him.  He asked her for the dance the minute she arrived, while I had driven to the hair-dresser’s to get a pair of gloves, and was late.  So I did not dance the mazurka with her, but with a German girl to whom I had previously paid a little attention; but I am afraid I did not behave very politely to her that evening.  I hardly spoke or looked at her, and saw nothing but the tall, slender figure in a white dress, with a pink sash, a flushed, beaming, dimpled face, and sweet, kind eyes.  I was not alone; they were all looking at her with admiration, the men and women alike, although she outshone all of them.  They could not help admiring her.

“Although I was not nominally her partner for the mazurka, I did as a matter of fact dance nearly the whole time with her.  She always came forward boldly the whole length of the room to pick me out.  I flew to meet her without waiting to be chosen, and she thanked me with a smile for my intuition.  When I was brought up to her with somebody else, and she guessed wrongly, she took the other man’s hand with a shrug of her slim shoulders, and smiled at me regretfully.

“Whenever there was a waltz figure in the mazurka, I waltzed with her for a long time, and breathing fast and smiling, she would say, ‘Encore’; and I went on waltzing and waltzing, as though unconscious of any bodily existence.”

“Come now, how could you be unconscious of it with your arm round her waist?  You must have been conscious, not only of your own existence, but of hers,” said one of the party.