“Not till tomorrow, Mariana ... not till tomorrow!”
“Till tomorrow,” she replied softly.
XXIX
Early the next morning Nejdanov again knocked at Mariana’s door.
“It is I,” he replied in answer to her “Who’s that?” “Can you come out to me?”
“In a minute.”
She came out and uttered a cry of alarm. At first she did not recognise him. He had on a long-skirted, shabby, yellowish nankin coat, with small buttons and a high waist; his hair was dressed in the Russian fashion with a parting straight down the middle; he had a blue kerchief round his neck, in his hand he held a cap with a broken peak, on his feet a pair of dirty leather boots.
“Heavens!” Mariana exclaimed. “How ugly you look!” and thereupon threw her arms round him and kissed him quickly. “But why did you get yourself up like this? You look like some sort of shopkeeper, or pedlar, or a retired servant. Why this long coat? Why not simply like a peasant?”
“Why?” Nejdanov began. He certainly did look like some sort of fishmonger in that garb, was conscious of it himself, and was annoyed and embarrassed at heart. He felt uncomfortable, and not knowing what to do with his hands, kept patting himself on the breast with the fingers outspread, as though he were brushing himself.
“Because as a peasant I should have been recognised at once Pavel says, and that in this costume I look as if I had been born to it ... which is not very flattering to my vanity, by the way.”