Page 248 - the-brothers-karamazov

expect something with childish, impatient, and confiding
curiosity. The light in her eyes gladdened the soul — Aly-
osha felt that. There was something else in her which he
could not understand, or would not have been able to define,
and which yet perhaps unconsciously affected him. It was
that softness, that voluptuousness of her bodily movements,
that catlike noiselessness. Yet it was a vigorous, ample body.
Under the shawl could be seen full broad shoulders, a high,
still quite girlish bosom. Her figure suggested the lines of
the Venus of Milo, though already in somewhat exagger-
ated proportions. That could be divined. Connoisseurs of
Russian beauty could have foretold with certainty that this
fresh, still youthful beauty would lose its harmony by the
age of thirty, would ‘spread”; that the face would become
puffy, and that wrinkles would very soon appear upon her
forehead and round the eyes; the complexion would grow
coarse and red perhaps — in fact, that it was the beauty
of the moment, the fleeting beauty which is so often met
with in Russian women. Alyosha, of course, did not think
of this; but though he was fascinated, yet he wondered with
an unpleasant sensation, and as it were regretfully, why she
drawled in that way and could not speak naturally. She did
so, evidently feeling there was a charm in the exaggerated,
honeyed modulation of the syllables. It was, of course, only a
bad, underbred habit that showed bad education and a false
idea of good manners. And yet this intonation and manner
of speaking impressed Alyosha as almost incredibly incon-
gruous with the childishly simple and happy expression of
her face, the soft, babyish joy in her eyes. Katerina Ivanovna