“Very well.  Your aunt sent you your favorite soap, rose-scented,” she said, placing the soap on the table, and the towels on the arms of the chair.

“The gentleman has his own,” Timon stood up for the independence of the guest, proudly pointing to the open traveling bag with silver lids, containing a large number of bottles, brushes, perfumes and all sorts of toilet articles.

“My thanks to auntie.  But how glad I am that I came,” said Nekhludoff, feeling the old brightness and emotions recurring to his soul.

In answer to this she only smiled and left the room.

The aunts, who always loved Nekhludoff, received him this time with greater joy than usual.  Dmitri was going to active service, where he might be wounded or killed.  This affected the aunts.

Nekhludoff had arranged his trip so that he might spend twenty-four hours with his aunts, but, seeing Katiousha, decided to remain over Easter Sunday, which was two days later, and wired to his friend and commander Shenbok, whom he was to meet at Odessa, to come to his aunts.

From the very first day Nekhludoff experienced the old feeling toward Katiousha.  Again he could not see without agitation the white apron of Katiousha; he could not listen without joy to her steps, her voice, her laugh; he could not, without emotion, look into her black eyes, especially when she smiled; he could not, above all, see, without confusion, how she blushed when they met.  He felt that he was in love, but not as formerly, when this love was to him a mystery, and he had not the courage to confess it to himself; when he was convinced that one can love only once.  Now he loved knowingly, rejoiced at it, and confusedly knowing, though he concealed it from himself, what it consisted of, and what might come of it.

In Nekhludoff, as in all people, there were two beings; one spiritual, who sought only such happiness for himself as also benefited others; and the animal being, seeking his own happiness for the sake of which he is willing to sacrifice that of the world.  During this period of his insane egotism, called forth by the life in the army and in St. Petersburg, the animal man dominated him and completely suppressed the spiritual man.  But, seeing Katiousha, and being again imbued with the feelings he formerly experienced toward her, the spiritual man raised his head and began to assert his rights.  And during the two days preceding Easter an incessant struggle was going on within Nekhludoff of which he was quite unconscious.

In the depth of his soul he knew that he had to depart; that his stay at his aunts was unnecessary, that nothing good could come of it, but it was so joyous and pleasant that he did not heed it, and remained.

On the eve of Easter Sunday, the priest and deacon who, as they afterward related, with difficulty covered the three miles from the church to the aunts’ manor, arrived on a sleigh to perform the morning services.