“ Je suis malade tout à fait, mais ce n’est pas trop mauvais d’être malade. ”

“Would you care to purchase?” a gentle feminine voice asked close by him.

He raised his eyes and to his surprise saw a lady⁠— une dame et elle en avait l’air , somewhat over thirty, very modest in appearance, dressed not like a peasant, in a dark gown with a grey shawl on her shoulders. There was something very kindly in her face which attracted Stepan Trofimovitch immediately. She had only just come back to the cottage, where her things had been left on a bench close by the place where Stepan Trofimovitch had seated himself. Among them was a portfolio, at which he remembered he had looked with curiosity on going in, and a pack, not very large, of American leather. From this pack she took out two nicely bound books with a cross engraved on the cover, and offered them to Stepan Trofimovitch.