Resurrection

"I did not know there was a ditch here," he answered, smiling

also, and keeping her hand in his. She drew nearer to him, and he

himself, not knowing how it happened, stooped towards her. She

did not move away, and he pressed her hand tight and kissed her

on the lips.

"There! You've done it!" she said; and, freeing her hand with a

swift movement, ran away from him. Then, breaking two branches of

white lilac from which the blossoms were already falling, she

began fanning her hot face with them; then, with her head turned

back to him, she walked away, swaying her arms briskly in front

of her, and joined the other players.

After this there grew up between Nekhludoff and Katusha those

peculiar relations which often exist between a pure young man and

girl who are attracted to each other.

When Katusha came into the room, or even when he saw her white

apron from afar, everything brightened up in Nekhludoff's eyes,

as when the sun appears everything becomes more interesting, more

joyful, more important. The whole of life seemed full of

gladness. And she felt the same. But it was not only Katusha's

presence that had this effect on Nekhludoff. The mere thought

that Katusha existed (and for her that Nekhludoff existed) had

this effect.

When he received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could

not get on with his essay, or felt the unreasoning sadness that

young people are often subject to, he had only to remember

Katusha and that he should see her, and it all vanished. Katusha

had much work to do in the house, but she managed to get a little

leisure for reading, and Nekhludoff gave her Dostoievsky and

Tourgeneff (whom he had just read himself) to read. She liked

Tourgeneff's Lull best. They had talks at moments snatched when

meeting in the passage, on the veranda, or the yard, and

sometimes in the room of his aunts' old servant, Matrona

Pavlovna, with whom he sometimes used to drink tea, and where

Katusha used to work.

These talks in Matrona Pavlovna's presence were the pleasantest.

When they were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to

say something very different and far more important than what

their mouths uttered. Their lips puckered, and they felt a kind

of dread of something that made them part quickly. These

relations continued between Nekhludoff and Katusha during the

whole time of his first visit to his aunts'. They noticed it, and

became frightened, and even wrote to Princess Elena Ivanovna,

Nekhludoff's mother. His aunt, Mary Ivanovna, was afraid Dmitri

would form an intimacy with Katusha; but her fears were

groundless, for Nekhludoff, himself hardly conscious of it, loved

Katusha, loved her as the pure love, and therein lay his

safety--his and hers. He not only did not feel any desire to

possess her, but the very thought of it filled him with horror.

The fears of the more poetical Sophia Ivanovna, that Dmitri, with

his thoroughgoing, resolute character, having fallen in love with

a girl, might make up his mind to marry her, without considering

either her birth or her station, had more ground.