Resurrection

And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.

Nekhludoff's aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona

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 diffused

by the thawing of the last snow, filled the air. From the river

under the hill, about a hundred steps from the front door, came a

strange sound. It was the ice breaking. Nekhludoff came down the

steps and went up to the window of the maids' room, stepping over

the puddles on the bits 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. Nekhludoff 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 in front of 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 mixed 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

confirmed him in his evil intention.

He knocked at the window. She started as if she had received an

electric shock, her whole body trembled, and a look of horror

came into her face. Then she jumped up, approached the window and

brought her face up 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 by 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. Nekhludoff

moved away from the window. The fog 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 fog, 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 blended

into one, while all around was silent excepting the river. It was

the second time the cocks crowed that night.