le
she was thus kissing with the beggar, her eyes met those of
Nekhludoff, and she seemed to ask him: "Is it not right? Is it not
proper?"

"Yes, yes, darling; it is right; everything is beautiful. I love you."

As they descended the stairs he came near her. He did not wish to kiss
her, but merely wished to be by her side.

"Christ has risen!" said Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward
and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All
are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief
which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended her lips.

"He has risen, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed each
other.

He turned to look at Katiousha. She flushed and at the same moment
approached him.

"Christ has risen, Dmitri Ivanovich."

"He has risen, indeed," he said. They kissed each other twice, and
seemed to be reflecting whether or not it was necessary to kiss a
third time, and having decided, as it were, that it was necessary,
they kissed again.

"Will you go to the priest?" asked Nekhludoff.

"No, we will stay here, Dmitri Ivanovich," answered Katiousha,
laboriously, as though after hard, pleasant exertion, breathing with
her full breast and looking straight in his eyes, with her submissive,
chaste, loving and slightly squinting eyes.

There is a point in the love between man and woman when that love
reaches its zenith; when it is free from consciousness, reason and
sensuality. Such a moment arrived for Nekhludoff that Easter morn.

Now, whenever he thought of Katiousha, her appearance at that moment
obscured every other recollection of her. The dark, smooth,
resplendent head; the white dress with folds clinging to her graceful
bust and undulating breast; those vermilion cheeks, those brilliant
black eyes, and two main traits in all her being: the virgin purity of
her love, not only for himself, but for everything and everybody--he
knew it--not only the good and beautiful, but even that beggar whom
she had kissed.

He knew that she possessed that love, because that night and that
morning he felt it within him, and felt that in that love his soul
mingled into one with hers.

Ah, if that feeling had continued unchanged! "Yes, that awful affair
occurred after that notable commemoration of Christ's resurrection!"
he thought now, sitting at the window of the jury-room.

CHAPTER XVI.

Returning from the church, Nekhludoff broke his fast with the aunts,