Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume V).djvu/87

before the eyes of every one, attracting universal attention, and would deliver her speech, and how Moscow would talk about her afterwards! . . . And, indeed, Moscow would have talked about her afterwards. She was a tall, slim girl, with a somewhat hollow chest and narrow unformed shoulders, with a skin of a dead-white, rare at her age, and pure and smooth as china, with thick fair hair; there were darker tresses mingled in a very original way with the light ones. Her features — exquisitely, almost too perfectly, correct — had not yet quite lost the innocent expression that belongs to childhood; the languid curves of her lovely neck, and her smile — half-indifferent, half-weary — betrayed the nervous temperament of a delicate girl; but in the lines of those fine, faintly-smiling lips, of that small, falcon, slightly-narrow nose, there was something wilful and passionate, something dangerous for herself and others. Astounding, really astounding were her eyes, dark grey with greenish lights, languishing, almond-shaped as an Egyptian goddess's, with shining lashes and bold sweep of eyebrow. There was a strange look in those eyes; they seemed looking out intently and thoughtfully — looking out from some unknown depth and distance. At school, Irina had been reputed one of the best pupils for intelligence and abilities, but of uneven