It was in her gait, her deportment, in
her very being that she differed from the rest of the girls. From
the moment she entered the house she had to run the gauntlet of
inquisitive looks, which seemed to pierce her very body and made her
look like a sieve, as it were. I looked at Marusya, and it seemed
to me that her face had become longer and her lips more compressed;
her eyes seemed wider open and lying deeper in her sockets. She
looked shrunken and contracted, very much like my mother on the eve
of the Ninth of Av, when she read aloud the Lamentations for the
benefit of her illiterate women-friends.
Well, that evening the sergeant danced with Marusya, neglecting the
other girls entirely. They kept on refusing the invitations of the
cavaliers, in the hope that they might yet have a chance to dance
with the sergeant. The result was that the cavaliers were angry
with the girls; the girls, with Marusya; and I, with the sergeant.
And when a recess was called, something happened: one of the
bachelors, Serge Ivanovich, my old enemy, stood up behind Marusya,
and shouted with all his might, "Zhidovka!" Then the envious girls
broke out into a malicious giggle.
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