“But to make up to her—­that is, to make her the heroine of one of those impromptu affairs to which tourists are so prone—­was not easy and, indeed, hardly possible.  I felt that as I gazed at her face.  The way she looked, and the expression of her face, suggested that the sea, the smoke in the distance, and the sky had bored her long, long ago, and wearied her sight.  She seemed to be tired, bored, and thinking about something dreary, and her face had not even that fussy, affectedly indifferent expression which one sees in the face of almost every woman when she is conscious of the presence of an unknown man in her vicinity.

“The fair-haired lady took a bored and passing glance at me, sat down on a seat and sank into reverie, and from her face I saw that she had no thoughts for me, and that I, with my Petersburg appearance, did not arouse in her even simple curiosity.  But yet I made up my mind to speak to her, and asked:  ’Madam, allow me to ask you at what time do the waggonettes go from here to the town?’

“‘At ten or eleven, I believe. . . .’”

“I thanked her.  She glanced at me once or twice, and suddenly there was a gleam of curiosity, then of something like wonder on her passionless face. . . .  I made haste to assume an indifferent expression and to fall into a suitable attitude; she was catching on!  She suddenly jumped up from the seat, as though something had bitten her, and examining me hurriedly, with a gentle smile, asked timidly: 

“‘Oh, aren’t you Ananyev?’

“‘Yes, I am Ananyev,’ I answered.

“‘And don’t you recognise me?  No?’

“I was a little confused.  I looked intently at her, and—­would you believe it?—­I recognised her not from her face nor her figure, but from her gentle, weary smile.  It was Natalya Stepanovna, or, as she was called, Kisotchka, the very girl I had been head over ears in love with seven or eight years before, when I was wearing the uniform of a high-school boy.  The doings of far, vanished days, the days of long ago. . . .  I remember this Kisotchka, a thin little high-school girl of fifteen or sixteen, when she was something just for a schoolboy’s taste, created by nature especially for Platonic love.  What a charming little girl she was!  Pale, fragile, light—­ she looked as though a breath would send her flying like a feather to the skies—­a gentle, perplexed face, little hands, soft long hair to her belt, a waist as thin as a wasp’s—­altogether something ethereal, transparent like moonlight—­in fact, from the point of view of a high-school boy a peerless beauty. . . .  Wasn’t I in love with her!  I did not sleep at night.  I wrote verses. . . .  Sometimes in the evenings she would sit on a seat in the park while we schoolboys crowded round her, gazing reverently; in response to our compliments, our sighing, and attitudinising, she would shrink nervously from the evening damp, screw up her eyes, and smile gently, and at such times she was awfully like a pretty little kitten.  As we gazed at her every one of us had a desire to caress her and stroke her like a cat, hence her nickname of Kisotchka.