Part 2 - Chapter 30 - Page 2

endowed
them with the most marvelous and noble characters, and found
confirmation of her idea in her observations.

Of these people the one that attracted her most was a Russian
girl who had come to the watering-place with an invalid Russian
lady, Madame Stahl, as everyone called her. Madame Stahl
belonged to the highest society, but she was so ill that she
could not walk, and only on exceptionally fine days made her
appearance at the springs in an invalid carriage. But it was not
so much from ill-health as from pride--so Princess
Shtcherbatskaya interpreted it--that Madame Stahl had not made
the acquaintance of anyone among the Russians there. The Russian
girl looked after Madame Stahl, and besides that, she was, as
Kitty observed, on friendly terms with all the invalids who were
seriously ill, and there were many of them at the springs, and
looked after them in the most natural way. This Russian girl was
not, as Kitty gathered, related to Madame Stahl, nor was she a
paid attendant. Madame Stahl called her Varenka, and other
people called her "Mademoiselle Varenka." Apart from the
interest Kitty took in this girl's relations with Madame Stahl
and with other unknown persons, Kitty, as often happened, felt an
inexplicable attraction to Mademoiselle Varenka, and was aware
when their eyes met that she too liked her.

Of Mademoiselle Varenka one would not say that she had passed her
first youth, but she was, as it were, a creature without youth;
she might have been taken for nineteen or for thirty. If her
features were criticized separately, she was handsome rather than
plain, in spite of the sickly hue of her face. She would have
been a good figure, too, if it had not been for her extreme
thinness and the size of her head, which was too large for her
medium height. But she was not likely to be attractive to men.
She was like a fine flower, already past its bloom and without
fragrance, though the petals were still unwithered. Moreover,
she would have been unattractive to men also from the lack of
just what Kitty had too much of--of the suppressed fire of
vitality, and the consciousness of her own attractiveness.

She always seemed absorbed in work about which there could be no
doubt, and so it seemed she could not take interest in anything
outside it. It was just this contrast with her own position that
was for Kitty the great attraction of Mademoiselle Varenka.
Kitty felt that in her, in her manner of life, she would find an
example of what she was now so painfully seeking: interest in
life, a dignity in life--apart from the worldly relations of
girls with men, which so revolted Kitty, and appeared to her now
as a shameful hawking about of goods in search of a purchaser.