Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/102

Rh distance from Sipyagin's garden. A little behind him, a little peasant's cart, harnessed to a pair of unbridled horses, could be seen behind the tangled green of a broad hazel-bush; in the cart, under the seat of plaited cord, a little grey-headed old peasant lay asleep on a bundle of hay, with his head on a patched overcoat. Nezhdanov kept incessantly looking towards the road, towards the clump of willows at the garden's edge; the grey stillness of night still hung over everything, the tiny stars strove feebly to outshine each other, lost in the waste depths of the sky. Along the rounded lower edges of the stretching clouds ran a pale flush from the east; thence too came the first chill breath of early morning. Suddenly Nezhdanov started and was all alert; somewhere near at hand there was first the shrill creak, then the thump of a gate; a little feminine figure wrapped in a shawl, with a bundle in its bare hand, stepped with a deliberate movement out of the still shadows of the willows on to the soft dust of the road, and crossing it in a slanting direction, apparently on tiptoe, turned towards the copse. Nezhdanov rushed up to it.

'Marianna?' he whispered.

'It's I!' came a soft reply from under the overhanging shawl.

'This way, follow me,' responded Nezhdanov,