Before Ognev stood Kuznetsov’s daughter Vera, a girl of one-and-twenty, as usual melancholy, carelessly dressed, and attractive.  Girls who are dreamy and spend whole days lying down, lazily reading whatever they come across, who are bored and melancholy, are usually careless in their dress.  To those of them who have been endowed by nature with taste and an instinct of beauty, the slight carelessness adds a special charm.  When Ognev later on remembered her, he could not picture pretty Verotchka except in a full blouse which was crumpled in deep folds at the belt and yet did not touch her waist; without her hair done up high and a curl that had come loose from it on her forehead; without the knitted red shawl with ball fringe at the edge which hung disconsolately on Vera’s shoulders in the evenings, like a flag on a windless day, and in the daytime lay about, crushed up, in the hall near the men’s hats or on a box in the dining-room, where the old cat did not hesitate to sleep on it.  This shawl and the folds of her blouse suggested a feeling of freedom and laziness, of good-nature and sitting at home.  Perhaps because Vera attracted Ognev he saw in every frill and button something warm, naive, cosy, something nice and poetical, just what is lacking in cold, insincere women that have no instinct for beauty.

Verotchka had a good figure, a regular profile, and beautiful curly hair.  Ognev, who had seen few women in his life, thought her a beauty.

“I am going away,” he said as he took leave of her at the gate.  “Don’t remember evil against me!  Thank you for everything!”

In the same singing divinity student’s voice in which he had talked to her father, with the same blinking and twitching of his shoulders, he began thanking Vera for her hospitality, kindness, and friendliness.

“I’ve written about you in every letter to my mother,” he said.  “If everyone were like you and your dad, what a jolly place the world would be!  You are such a splendid set of people!  All such genuine, friendly people with no nonsense about you.”

“Where are you going to now?” asked Vera.

“I am going now to my mother’s at Oryol; I shall be a fortnight with her, and then back to Petersburg and work.”

“And then?”

“And then?  I shall work all the winter and in the spring go somewhere into the provinces again to collect material.  Well, be happy, live a hundred years . . . don’t remember evil against me.  We shall not see each other again.”

Ognev stooped down and kissed Vera’s hand.  Then, in silent emotion, he straightened his cape, shifted his bundle of books to a more comfortable position, paused, and said: 

“What a lot of mist!”

“Yes.  Have you left anything behind?”

“No, I don’t think so. . . .”

For some seconds Ognev stood in silence, then he moved clumsily towards the gate and went out of the garden.

“Stay; I’ll see you as far as our wood,” said Vera, following him out.