n Arkadyevitch.

"Yes," answered Levin, and he told Kouzma to put out his clothes
for him to dress.

Chapter 3

A crowd of people, principally women, was thronging round the
church lighted up for the wedding. Those who had not succeeded
in getting into the main entrance were crowding about the
windows, pushing, wrangling, and peeping through the gratings.

More than twenty carriages had already been drawn up in ranks
along the street by the police. A police officer, regardless of
the frost, stood at the entrance, gorgeous in his uniform. More
carriages were continually driving up, and ladies wearing flowers
and carrying their trains, and men taking off their helmets or
black hats kept walking into the church. Inside the church both
lusters were already lighted, and all the candles before the holy
pictures. The gilt on the red ground of the holy picture-stand,
and the gilt relief on the pictures, and the silver of the
lusters and candlesticks, and the stones of the floor, and the
rugs, and the banners above in the choir, and the steps of the
altar, and the old blackened books, and the cassocks and
surplices--all were flooded with light. On the right side of the
warm church, in the crowd of frock coats and white ties, uniforms
and broadcloth, velvet, satin, hair and flowers, bare shoulders
and arms and long gloves, there was discreet but lively
conversation that echoed strangely in the high cupola. Every
time there was heard the creak of the opened door the
conversation in the crowd died away, and everybody looked round
expecting to see the bride and bridegroom come in. But the door
had opened more than ten times, and each time it was either a
belated guest or guests, who joined the circle of the invited on
the right, or a spectator, who had eluded or softened the police
officer, and went to join the crowd of outsiders on the left.
Both the guests and the outside public had by now passed through
all the phases of anticipation.

At first they imagined that the bride and bridegroom would arrive
immediately, and attached no importance at all to their being
late. Then they began to look more and more often towards the
door, and to talk of whether anything could have happened. Then
the long delay began to be positively discomforting, and
relations and guests tried to look as if they were not thinking
of the bridegroom but were engrossed in conversation.

The head deacon, as though to remind them of th