"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.