tered the
room, holding a quilt on her arm, and, looking reproachfully at
Nekhludoff, angrily rebuked Katiousha for taking the wrong quilt.

Nekhludoff went out in silence. He was not even ashamed. By the
expression of Matriena Pavlovna's face he saw that she condemned him,
and justly so; he knew that what he was doing was wrong, but the
animal feeling, which succeeded his former feeling of pure love to
her, seized him and held sole sway over him; recognizing no other
feeling. He knew now what was necessary to do in order to satisfy that
feeling, and was looking for means to that end.

He was out of sorts all that night. Now he would go to his aunts; now
he returned to his room, or went to the perron, thinking but of one
thing: how to meet her alone. But she avoided him, and Matriena
Pavlovna strove not to lose sight of her.

CHAPTER XVII.

Thus the entire evening passed, and when night came the doctor went to
bed. The aunts were also preparing to retire. Nekhludoff knew that
Matriena Pavlovna was in the aunts' dormitory, and that Katiousha was
in the servants' quarters--alone. He again went out on the perron. It
was dark, damp and warm, and that white mist which in the spring thaws
the last snow, filled the air. Strange noises came from the river,
which was a hundred feet from the house. It was the breaking up of the
ice.

Nekhludoff came down from the perron, and stepping over pools and the
thin ice-covering formed on the snow, walked toward the window of the
servants' quarters. His heart beat so violently that he could hear it;
his breathing at times stopped, at others it escaped in a heavy sigh.
A small lamp was burning in the maid-servants' room.

Katiousha was sitting at the table alone, musing and looking at the
wall before her. Without moving Nekhludoff for some time stood gazing
at her, wishing to know what she would do while thinking herself
unobserved. For about two minutes she sat motionless, then raised her
eyes, smiled, reproachfully shook her head, at herself apparently,
and, changing her position, with a start placed both hands on the
table and fixed her eyes before her.

He remained looking at her, and involuntarily listened to the beating
of his heart and the strange sounds coming from the river. There, on
the misty river some incessant, slow work was going on. Now something
snuffled, then it crackled, and again the thin layer of ice resounded
like a mass of crushed glass.

He stood