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208
SÖNYA KOVALÉVSKY
was uncertain; they varied from gray to green and
brown. Unusually large, prominent, and luminous,
they had an intensity of expression which seemed to
pierce the farthest corner of your soul when she fixed
her eyes upon you. But though so piercing they were
soft and loving, and full of responsive sympathy, which
seemed to woo those on whom their magnetizing power
rested to tell her their inmost secrets. So great was
their charm that one scarcely noticed their defect—
Sönya was so short-sighted that when she was very
tired she often squinted.
She turned to me with a quick movement, and came
across the room to greet me with outstretched hands.
There was a certain shyness about her which made
one at first feel rather formal.
Our first conversation turned on the bad toothache
she had unfortunately suffered from during the voyage.
I offered to take her to the dentist. A pleasant object,
indeed, for her first walk in a new town! She was,
however, the last person to bestow too much attention
or time on so trivial an incident.
I was at that moment thinking out the plot of my
play entitled "How to Do Good," but had not yet
written it down. So great was Sönya’s power of
giving an impetus to one’s inner thoughts that, before
she had reached the dentist’s, I had told her the whole
play, worked out in far greater detail and breadth than
I had ever been conscious of intending.
This was the commencement of the great influence
she exercised on my writings afterward. Her power
of understanding and sympathizing with the thoughts
of others was so exceptional, her praise when she was
pleased so warm and enthusiastic, her criticism so just,
that, for a receptive nature like mine, it was impossible
to work without her approbation.
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