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.