XXIX
The 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?'
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