No one had ever yet told Mascha that she had a beautiful figure. She turns her head on all sides to look at herself in the glass. For the first time she finds the mirror over her toilet table too small. Her eyes dance, her finger-tips twitch for joy. Incessantly she turns over the dress, discovering new beauties. "Ah, it is superb! But will the seamstress finish the alteration in time?" she asks, anxiously.
Now all is arranged. The maid has thrown a red scarf of India cashmere around Mascha's shoulders. She hurries down the stairs, bursts into the room, and throwing away the scarf, hurries up to her father and Nikolai.
"Eh bien!" says she, and turns slowly around like a figure in a shop. "Eh bien!"
They are alone in the drawing-room, the two Lenskys and the young girl. What joy to let herself be admired by father and brother without being at the same time submitted to Anna's icy, depressing criticism!
"I am quite ready on this side," she declares importantly, and points to her right arm, which is enveloped to the shoulder in a tan-colored glove, while the left is still bare.
"So! Well, I prefer the other side," says Lensky, laughing. And in truth one can think of nothing more charming than this bare, round, slender arm, not statuesque, white as the arm of a married woman of thirty--no, even a trifle red on the upper part, but with such a bewitching dimple at the elbow, with such tiny blue veins around the wrist.
"Yes; I decidedly prefer it," repeated Lensky, and pushes his daughter somewhat from him in order to observe her more particularly. Nikolai also looks attentively at his sister, tries to make the necessary remarks, to criticise a little. But as she stands before him in her artistically simple white dress, her little fingers twitching with embarrassment, and with her large, anxious eyes seeking approval in his face which she awaited so securely and now cannot find, it really seems to him that never in his life has he met a lovelier young girl than Mascha. What shoulders, what a figure, so beautifully rounded, without the immature thinness of other seventeen-year-old girls. And what is most charming in this unusual little being, on these plump, dazzling shoulders rests such a sweet, pale, little childish face, with such a tender, innocent mouth, with such indescribably pure eyes, looking out boldly and fearlessly at the world, so that the contrast is really painful. One feels that the girl has been desecrated by no grovelling curiosity, no passionate dreams; that she is perfectly unconscious of her physical maturity.
"You are not as beautiful as your mother was," says Lensky after awhile.
"No one else is as beautiful; but that is not necessary," says Mascha, now really troubled. "But--but do I not, then, please you at all?"
"You foolish little goose, do you believe that?" says Lensky, drawing his daughter to him. "We will not tease you any longer, eh, Colia? We will at last tell her quite simply that she looks charming. Yes," he repeated, holding her head down on his shoulder and stroking it, "you are charming, my little dove. You will certainly hear it often enough to-day, and later. Why should I not enjoy the pleasure of being the first to say it to you? You are still a little bit tear-stained," adds he very gently. "Poor little heart, poor angel! But it is becoming to you!"