Resurrection

When he had taken off all his wet things and just begun to dress

again, Nekhludoff heard quick, familiar footsteps and a knock at

the door. Nekhludoff knew the steps and also the knock. No one

but she walked and knocked like that.

Having thrown his wet greatcoat over his shoulders, he opened the

door.

"Come in." It was she, Katusha, the same, only sweeter than

before. The slightly squinting naive black eyes looked up in the

same old way. Now as then, she had on a white apron. She brought

him from his aunts a piece of scented soap, with the wrapper just

taken off, and two towels--one a long Russian embroidered one,

the other a bath towel. The unused soap with the stamped

inscription, the towels, and her own self, all were equally

clean, fresh, undefiled and pleasant. The irrepressible smile of

joy at the sight of him made the sweet, firm lips pucker up as of

old.

"How do you do, Dmitri Ivanovitch?" she uttered with difficulty,

her face suffused with a rosy blush.

"Good-morning! How do you do?" he said, also blushing. "Alive and

well?"

"Yes, the Lord be thanked. And here is your favorite pink soap and

towels from your aunts," she said, putting the soap on the table

and hanging the towels over the back of a chair.

"There is everything here," said Tikhon, defending the visitor's

independence, and pointing to Nekhludoff's open dressing case

filled with brushes, perfume, fixatoire, a great many bottles

with silver lids and all sorts of toilet appliances.

"Thank my aunts, please. Oh, how glad I am to be here," said

Nekhludoff, his heart filling with light and tenderness as of

old.

She only smiled in answer to these words, and went out. The

aunts, who had always loved Nekhludoff, welcomed him this time

more warmly than ever. Dmitri was going to the war, where he

might be wounded or killed, and this touched the old aunts.

Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a day and night with his

aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to stay over Easter

with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom he was to

have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his

aunts' instead.

As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff's old feelings toward

her awoke again. Now, just as then, he could not see her white

apron without getting excited; he could not listen to her steps,

her voice, her laugh, without a feeling of joy; he could not look

at her eyes, black as sloes, without a feeling of tenderness,

especially when she smiled; and, above all, he could not notice

without agitation how she blushed when they met. He felt he was

in love, but not as before, when this love was a kind of mystery

to him and he would not own, even to himself, that he loved, and

when he was persuaded that one could love only once; now he knew

he was in love and was glad of it, and knew dimly what this love

consisted of and what it might lead to, though he sought to

conceal it even from himself. In Nekhludoff, as in every man,

there were two beings: one the spiritual, seeking only that kind

of happiness for him self which should tend towards the happiness

of all; the other, the animal man, seeking only his own

happiness, and ready to sacrifice to it the happiness of the rest

of the world. At this period of his mania of self-love brought on

by life in Petersburg and in the army, this animal man ruled

supreme and completely crushed the spiritual man in him.