However, I always found it strange: I never made a slave of the woman he loved; on the contrary, I always gained over their mind and heart an invincible power, all of this without trying. Why is this? - Because if I had nothing very much more expensive and they feared every moment to release my hand? or that - the magnetic influence of a strong body? or just not able to meet a woman with persistent character?I must admit that I do not like women with character: Is it up to them ..!However, now I remember, once, only once, I love a woman with a strong will, which could never win ... We parted enemies - and, perhaps, if I had met her five years later, we would have parted differently ...Vera is ill, very ill, although this is not recognized, I am afraid that was not in her consumption, or that disease which is called fievre lente - the disease is not Russian at all, and her in our language has no name.The storm caught us in a cave and kept the extra half hour. She made me swear allegiance, did not ask if I loved others since we parted ... She entrusted herself to me again with the same nonchalance, - I did not cheat; she is the only woman in the world, which I was unable to deceive. I know we will soon separated again, and perhaps for ever: the two go in different ways to the grave; but the memory of it will remain intact in my soul; I repeated it to her and she always believes me, but says the opposite.Finally we parted; I have long followed her gaze until her hat disappeared behind bushes and rocks. My heart ached as the first separation. Oh, how glad I was that feeling! I do not whether the youth with its beneficial storms wants to come back to me again, or is it just her last look, a last gift - in memory .. And funny to think that I'm kind of a boy: the person at the pale, but still fresh;? members are flexible and slender; thick curly curls, eyes burning, blood is boiling ...On returning home, I mounted and rode into the steppe; I love to ride a horse goyachchey through tall grass, against the desert wind; I greedily swallow the sweet air and his eye in the blue distance, trying to catch the vague sketches of items that every minute is becoming clearer and clearer. Whatever bitterness or lying on the heart, whatever anxiety or tormented by the thought, all in a moment dispelled; your soul will easily win the mind body fatigue alarm. None of the female gaze, which I had not forgotten at the sight of curly mountains, lit up the southern sun, with a blue sky and listening to the noise of the stream falling from a rock at the cliff.I think the Cossacks, yawning on their towers, seeing me riding without the need and purpose for a long time suffered this a mystery, for it is true for clothes took me for a Circassian. I actually said that in Circassian costume riding I'm more like a Kabardian than many Kabardians. And just with regard to this noble battle dress, I am a perfect dandy: a single braid of excess; valuable weapon in a simple trim, fur on the cap is not too long, not too short; leggings and driven home with all kinds of slippers accuracy; White tunic, Circassian dark brown. I have long studied the Highland Landing: nothing is impossible so flattered my vanity as acknowledging my skill in riding the Caucasian way. I keep four horses: one for myself, for the three friends, so as not to be bored one dragged through the fields; they take my horses with pleasure and never with me do not go together. It was six o'clock in the afternoon, when I remembered that it was time for dinner; my horse was exhausted; I went on the road leading from Pyatigorsk to the German colony, which often drives water society en piquenique6. The road goes meanders between bushes, sinking in small gullies where noisy creeks flow in the shadow of tall grasses; Circle amphitheater tower blue bulk Besht, Snake, Iron and Bald Mountain. Later, in one of these ravines, called on the local dialect beams, I stopped to water the horses; at this time it appeared on the road a noisy and brilliant cavalcade: Ladies in black and blue Amazons, knights in costumes, make up a mixture of Circassian with the Nizhny Novgorod; I went ahead Grushnitski with Princess Mary.