Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume VII).djvu/131



next day early in the morning Nezhdanov again knocked at Marianna's door.

'It's I,' he said in answer to her 'Who's there?' 'Can you come out to me?'

'Wait a minute directly.'

She came out, and uttered a cry of astonishment. For the first minute she did not recognise him. He had on a long full-skirted coat of threadbare, yellowish nankin, with tiny buttons and a high waist; he had combed his hair in the Russian style, with a straight parting in the middle; his neck was wrapped in a blue kerchief; in his hand he held a cap with a broken peak; on his feet were unpolished high boots of calf leather.

'Good gracious!' cried Marianna; 'how horrid you look!' and thereupon she gave him a rapid embrace, and a still more rapid kiss. 'But why are you dressed like that? You look like a poor sort of shopkeeper or a pedlar, or a discharged house-serf. Why that coat with skirts, and not simply a peasant's smock?'