Volodia felt as if the room and Nyuta, and the dawn, and he himself had suddenly rushed together into a keen, unknown feeling of happiness for which he was ready to give his whole life and lose his soul for ever, but half a minute later it all suddenly vanished.
“Well, I must go—” said Nyuta, looking contemptuously at Volodia. “What a pitiful, plain boy you are—Bah, you ugly duckling!”
How hideous her long hair, her full blouse, her footsteps and her voice now seemed to him!
“Ugly duckling!” he thought. “Yes, I am indeed ugly—everything is ugly.”
The sun rose; the birds broke into song; the sound of the gardener’s footsteps and the creaking of his wheelbarrow rose from the garden. The cows lowed and the notes of a shepherd’s pipe trembled in the air. The sunlight and all these manifold sounds proclaimed that somewhere in the world there could be found a life that was pure, and gracious, and poetic. Where was it? Neither Volodia’s mother, nor any one of the people who surrounded the boy had ever spoken of it to him.
When the man servant came to call him for the morning train, he pretended to be asleep.
“Oh, to thunder with it all!” he thought.
He got up at eleven. As he brushed his hair before the mirror he looked at his plain face, so pale after his sleepless night, and thought:
“She is quite right. I really am an ugly duckling.”
When his mother saw him and seemed horrified at his not having gone to take his examination, Volodia said: