Without releasing her from his embrace, Nekhludoff seated her on the bed, and feeling that something else ought to be done, seated himself beside her.

“Dmitri Ivanovich, darling, please let me go,” she said in a piteous voice.  “Matriena Pavlovna is coming!” she suddenly exclaimed, tearing herself away.

Matriena Pavlovna was really approaching the door.  She entered 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 looking at the thoughtful face of Katiousha, tormented by an internal struggle, and he pitied her.  But, strange to say, this pity only increased his longing for her.