rward standing, or fell on their knees. The
children, imitating their elders, prayed fervently when they were
looked at. The gold iconostasis was aflame with innumerable candles,
which surrounded a large one in the centre wound in a narrow strip of
gilt paper. The church lustre was dotted with candles, joyful melodies
of volunteer singers with roaring bass and piercing contralto mingled
with the chant of the choir.

Nekhludoff went forward. In the middle of the church stood the
aristocracy; a country squire with his wife and son in a sailor
blouse, the commissary of the rural police, a telegraph operator, a
merchant in high boots, the local syndic with a medal on his breast,
and to the right of the tribune, behind the squire's wife, Matriena
Pavlovna, in a lilac-colored chatoyant dress and white shawl with
colored border, and beside her was Katiousha in a white dress,
gathered in folds at the waist, a blue belt, and a red bow in her
black hair.

Everything was solemn, joyous and beautiful; the priest in his bright,
silver chasuble, dotted with gilt crosses, the deacon, the chanters in
holiday surplice of gold and silver, the spruce volunteer singers with
oiled hair, the joyous melodies of holiday songs, the ceaseless
blessing of the throng by the priests with flower-bedecked tern
candles with the constantly repeated exclamations: "Christ has risen!
Christ has risen!" Everything was beautiful, but more beautiful than
all was Katiousha, in her white dress, blue belt and red bow in her
hair, and her eyes radiant with delight.

Nekhludoff felt that she saw him without turning round. He saw it
while passing near her to the altar. He had nothing to tell her, but
tried to think of something, and said, when passing her:

"Auntie said that she would receive the sacrament after mass."

Her young blood, as it always happened when she looked at him, rose to
her cheeks, and her black eyes, naively looking up, fixed themselves
on Nekhludoff.

"I know it," she said, smiling.

At that moment a chanter with a copper coffee-pot in his hand passed
close to Katiousha, and, without looking at her, grazed her with the
skirt of the surplice. The chanter, evidently out of respect for
Nekhludoff, wished to sweep around him, and thus it happened that he
grazed Katiousha.

Nekhludoff, however, was surprised that that chanter did not
understand that everything in the church, and in the whole world, for
that matter, existed only for Kati