‘When I reached the corner of the street where the girls’ gymnasium was situated, I asked my uncle to stop, and with a beating heart, smoothing down my shirt and my collars, I ran to the gymnasium. I looked at myself in the mirror in the porter’s room and found myself looking pretty: tears and excitement added some tender color to my face, my cheeks were flushed, and my eyes shone with a dark glow. I asked the doorman timidly, “Can I see the third-grade student, AlexAndra BryAntseva? “. - Wait for five minutes, - the doorman said. And I waited. I felt light and happy again… The sharp bell frightened me, and immediately after it, the corridors above and below began to hum with young voices. Sasha ran to me even more cute and elegant in her simple dress. I gave her my hand, smiling shyly and happily. We were surrounded by about fifteen of her friends, so we went to the exit glass doors”.

’… I remember the ball at the girls’ gymnasium — the first ball I attended… Returning home after school, Glebochka and I decided to walk along the street where the girls’ gymnasium, was located, in the courtyard of which huge snowdrifts were shoveled on the both sides of the driveway leading to the front porch and two rows of unusually thick and fresh Christmas trees were installed in those snowdrifts…And there were the schoolgirls coming out of the gymnasium, in their fur coats and boots, in pretty caps and bonnets, with long eyelashes silvered with frost and with their radiant eyes, and some of them spoke loudly to us passing by: ‘Welcome to the ball! ” After the ball I was drunk with the memories about the ball and about myself: about that elegant, beautiful and dexterous schoolboy /… / who was diving into the crowd of elegant girls, was rushing down the corridor, up and down the stairs, and then drank the horchata in the buffet, was gliding among the dancers on the parquet floor sprinkled with some sort of satin powder, in a big white dance hall, bathed in the pearly light of the chandeliers and full with the solemn and sonorous thunder of military music, … and was fascinated by each pretty shoe, each white pelerine, each black velvet on the neck, each silk bow in the braid…’