I have always suspected, that I was blowsy,--blowsy and loose-jointed,
with legs that are too long and not the right sort of feet. I hated my
_Beethovenkopf_ and all its hair. I wanted to have less hair, and for
it to be drawn neatly high off my face and brushed and waved in
beautiful regular lines. And I wanted a spotless lacy blouse, and a
string of pearls round my throat, and a perfectly made blue serge skirt
without mud on it,--it was raining, and I had walked. Do you know what
I felt like? A _goodnatured_ thing. The sort of creature people say
generously about afterwards, "Oh, but she's so goodnatured."

Grafin Koseritz was terribly kind to me, and that made me shyer than
ever, for I knew she was trying to put me at my ease, and you can
imagine how shy _that_ made me. I blushed and dropped things, and the
more I blushed and dropped things the kinder she was. And all the time
my contemporary, Helena, looked at me with the same calm eyes. She has
a completely emotionless face. I saw no trace of a passion for music
or for anything else in it. She made no approaches of any sort to me,
she just calmly looked at me. Her mother talked with the extreme
vivacity of the hostess who has a difficult party on hand. There was a
silent governess between two children. Junkerlets still in the
school-room, who stared uninterruptedly at me and seemed unsuccessfully
endeavouring to place me; there was a young lady cousin who talked
during the whole meal in an undertone to Helena; and there was Graf
Koseritz, an abstracted man who came in late, muttered something vague
on being introduced to me and told I was a new genius Kloster had
unearthed, sat down to his meal from which he did not look up again,
and was monosyllabic when his wife tried to draw him in and make the
conversation appear general. And all the time, while lending an ear to
her cousin's murmur of talk, Helena's calm eyes lingered on one portion
after the other of your poor vulnerable Chris.