All the while she directed me, pointing with her right hand, involuntarily I admired her. There was nothing in her like the local girls, whose faces have such a scared, monotonous look under the ugly head-bands which cover their forehead, mouth, and chin. My unknown was a tall brunette from twenty to twenty-five years old, free and graceful. Her white shirt covered her strong young bosom loosely and charmingly. Once seen, the peculiar beauty of her face could not be forgotten; it was even difficult to get accustomed to it, to describe it. The charm lay in her large, shining, dark eyes, to which the thin arched eyebrows gave an indescribable air, shy, queenly, and innocent, and in the dusky pink of her skin, in the self-willed curl of her lips. Her under-lip was fuller, and it was pushed forward a little, giving her a determined and capricious look.
‘Are you really not afraid to live by yourselves in such a lonely spot?’ I asked, stopping by the hedge.
She shrugged her shoulders indifferently.
‘Why should we be afraid? The wolves do not come near us.’
‘Wolves are not everything. Your hut might be smothered under the snow. The hut might catch on fire. Anything might happen. You two are there alone, no one could come to your assistance.’
‘Thank God for that!’ she waved her hand scornfully. ‘If granny and I were left alone entirely, it would be much better, but——’
‘What?’
‘You will get old, if you want to know so much,’ she cut me short. ‘And who are you?’ she asked anxiously.
I realised that probably the old woman and the girl were afraid of persecution from the authorities, and I hastened to reassure her.
‘Oh, don’t be alarmed. I’m not the village policeman, or the clerk, or the exciseman.... I’m not an official at all.’