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Walking towards the teacher’s table, Dina noticed that Konstantin Konstantinovich was watching her legs, as if afraid that she would trip over the scuffed linoleum or slip on it.

Yes, that was how Dina first interpreted her teacher’s intent attention to her clicking heels and her ankles, in no way special from her point of view, and her knees, peeking out from a not-so-short skirt.

In the next second, Dina smiled, almost audibly, at her own naivety.

She stopped abruptly.

Konstantin Konstantinovich, a raven-headed, eye-catching thirty-year-old man, always dressed in a sharp dark suit, white shirt, and fashionable tie, looked up into Dina’s eyes. His face was somewhat puzzled, as if asking, “What is the matter, young lady?”

Dina continued her journey, holding her teacher’s gaze with her own.

She approached the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. Then she crossed one leg over the other. She did it all in her usual leisurely manner, with a dignity that nobody here at the university had any idea about.

With a smile, containing a mixture of surprise, admiration, and the recognition of being beaten by a worthy opponent, the man took Dina’s ticket and put it in a pile with the other used ones, without checking what was on it. Then he moved aside Dina’s draft answer sheet in the same manner. Konstantin Konstantinovich quickly wrote something down on a clean sheet of paper, and pushed it towards Dina, saying loudly, so that the whole auditorium could hear him:

“I do not doubt your knowledge, Dina Aleksandrovna Turbina. I therefore don’t intend to waste your precious time. Your record book, please.”

Dina opened her record book on the required page, with all the subjects there showing only “Excellent,” and read the message on the sheet of paper, written in large, fast handwriting: Today, at 18:45 in front of the Peace Cinema.

The teacher signed Dina’s record book. “Congratulations on an excellent finish of the semester, Dina Aleksandrovna.”

“Thank you, Konstantin Konstantinovich,” replied Dina and reached for her student ID.

Konstantin Konstantinovich held down the corner of the record book with his index finger. Once Dina lifted her eyes to look at him, he released the book and said in the same playful tone, “See you in the next academic year, Dina Aleksandrovna. Have a good internship and enjoy your holidays!”

“Goodbye, Konstantin Konstantinovich.” Dina stood up and walked stately out of the auditorium.

Click… click… click… her heels counted the distance from the table to the door, from this year’s last exam and until next year, the final year of university.

Dina could physically feel Konstantin Konstantinovich’s eyes on her calves. As she was closing the door behind her, Dina turned around and could verify that she was right.

That was what would not let Dina go from the cloudy late spring of the present into the sunny summer future. The note, inviting her on a date with the most gorgeous but also the most fickle – so her not-overly-experienced heart told her – the most fickle man in the world. And this man’s undisguised interest in her appearance, or to be more exact, her legs.

All this thrilled Dina and made her waver between sweet anticipation and vague fears that sent chills down her spine. And to feel sorry that the next academic year was so far away…

Why, why would he want her? Hasn’t he got anyone else to go to the movies with? It is not like there was a lack of beauties at their university or even the whole big city.

“Don’t think about it!” she heard suddenly. It was her Inner Voice. “Do you want to go on this date?”

“Yes… I do.”

“Then go. Don’t worry about the other beauties for the moment.”

Dina did not even consider herself cute.

Not because of an inferiority complex, so often present in young ladies, who were not fortunate to become the center of universal male attention. Not at all. The reason was that Dina’s ideas of beauty were based on such unattainable ideals that even the girls others considered beautiful and attractive did not deserve such labels in her opinion. Perhaps only Rimma Yakovleva, the second-year girl that Dina shared a room with, could be called cute… Therefore, there was no point in getting upset if you weren’t born looking like Anna Magnani! You had to be satisfied with what you had.

It was Anna Magnani who was the benchmark of female beauty for Dina, and not Brigitte Bardot and Sophia Loren, whom all the girls her age were obsessed with.

“She is hideous like Baba Yaga!” laughed her classmates at first, and then the girls at university, looking at the portrait of the little-known actress.

“You just don’t know anything about beauty!” replied Dina with a quiet dignity and the unwavering certainty in her right to have an opinion that differed from the majority.

She did not become offended. What did she have to be offended about? The fact that they lacked the emotional subtlety to sense – sense rather than see – what true beauty was? She should not be offended by them but pity them.

Dina did not yet have a benchmark for male beauty. Nevertheless, the sickly-sweet blue-eyed Frenchman that everyone swooned over conjured up in her a feeling of dislike, almost disgust. Muslim Magomaev, on the other hand, whom Dina had only seen in magazine photographs, but knew and loved his voice, thrilled Dina. And Jean Marais… Although Dina would not have been able to say with certainty whether it was the character of d’Artagnan, the valiant musketeer, that she loved, or the actor playing him. One way or another, in both d’Artagnan and Jean Marais, Dina sensed the important thing that every woman subconsciously seeks in a man: nobility and virtue, and the ability to protect the lady from all troubles. Dina did not yet know if nobility and inner strength went hand-in-hand with external beauty.

Dina was a slender girl, slightly taller than average, with great posture and the unhurried walk of someone who is sure of themselves. Her mom had taught her from childhood to watch her posture. She had also taught Dina everything else that made her extraordinarily unique: good manners, how to take care of herself, careful wardrobe selection, and later, make-up.

“Even if you’re no great beauty,” her mom always said, “your face, hair and nails should be always well looked after.”