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.