Page:Sologub Sweet Scented Name.djvu/58

 Then the features and the whole figure of Lohengrin became strangely altered. An unhealthy-looking little man with reddish beetle-like whiskers, his fur hat pushed to the back of his head, his little red ears almost hidden by the fur collar of his overcoat, waving his hands awkwardly in his grey fur gloves, slipping in his shiny galoshes on the icy pavement of Pea Street, sang these same words. His voice was as sweet and melodious as that of the stage Lohengrin, and yet it sounded a little ridiculous and repulsive.

After that evening Mashenka met the young man every day as she was going home from school. He walked behind her like a tiresome and amusing shadow from which she could not escape, and accompanied her to the very door of her home. Sometimes he even entered the gate of the courtyard and came up the outside staircase, and when Mashenka went indoors and slammed the door behind her she felt that he was still waiting outside. Her heart beat quickly, her cheeks crimsoned, her eyes glistened as she smiled to herself and thought: