NEKHLYUDOV AND KATUSHA
AND so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed. Nekhlyudov’s aunts had also retired; and he knew that Matrena Pavlovna was now with them in their bedroom, so that Katusha was sure to be alone in the maids’ sitting-room. He again went out into the porch. It was dark, damp, and warm out of doors, and that white spring mist which drives away the last snow, or is caused by the thawing of the last snow, filled the air. From the river below the hill, about a hundred paces from the front door, came a strange sound. It was the ice breaking up. Nekhlyudov descended the steps and went to the window of the maids’ room, stepping over the puddles on the patches of glazed snow. His heart was beating so fiercely in his breast that he seemed to hear it; his laboured breath came and went in a burst of long-drawn sighs. In the maids’ room a small lamp was burning, and Katusha sat alone by the table looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhlyudov stood a long time without moving, and waited to see what she, not knowing that she was observed, would do. For a minute or two she did not move; then she lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head as if chiding herself, then changed her pose and dropped both her arms on the table and again began gazing down before her. He stood and looked at her, involuntarily listening to the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds from the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping, being shattered to pieces, mingled with the tinkling of the thin bits of ice as they broke against each other like glass.
There he stood, looking at Katusha’s serious, suffering face, which betrayed the inner struggle of her soul, and he felt pity for her; but, strange though it may seem, this pity only increased his desire. Desire had taken entire possession of him.
He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an electric shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of terror came into her face. Then she jumped up, approached the window, and brought her face close to the pane. The look of terror did not leave her face even when, holding her hands up to her eyes like blinkers and peering through the glass, she recognised him. Her face was unusually grave; he had never seen it so before. She returned his smile, but only in submission to him; there was no smile in her soul, only fear. He beckoned her with his hand to come out into the yard to him. But she shook her head and remained at the window. He brought his face close to the pane, and was going to call out to her, but at that moment she turned to the door. Evidently some one inside had called her. Nekhlyudov moved away from the window. The mist was so dense that five steps from the house the windows could not be seen, but the light from the lamp shone red and huge out of a shapeless black mass. And on the river the same strange sounds went on, sobbing and rustling and cracking and tinkling. Somewhere in the mist not far off, a cock crowed; another answered, and then others far in the village took up the cry, till the sound of the crowing blent into one, while all around was silent excepting the river. It was the second time the cocks crowed that night.