Everything seemed festive, solemn, bright, and beautiful:  the priest in his silver cloth vestments with gold crosses; the deacon, the clerk and chanter in their silver and gold surplices; the amateur choristers in their best clothes, with their well-oiled hair; the merry tunes of the holiday hymns that sounded like dance music; and the continual blessing of the people by the priests, who held candles decorated with flowers, and repeated the cry of “Christ is risen!” “Christ is risen!” All was beautiful; but, above all, Katusha, in her white dress, blue sash, and the red bow on her black head, her eyes beaming with rapture.

Nekhludoff knew that she felt his presence without looking at him.  He noticed this as he passed her, walking up to the altar.  He had nothing to tell her, but he invented something to say and whispered as he passed her:  “Aunt told me that she would break her fast after the late mass.”  The young blood rushed up to Katusha’s sweet face, as it always did when she looked at him.  The black eyes, laughing and full of joy, gazed naively up and remained fixed on Nekhludoff.

“I know,” she said, with a smile.

At this moment the clerk was going out with a copper coffee-pot [coffee-pots are often used for holding holy water in Russia] of holy water in his hand, and, not noticing Katusha, brushed her with his surplice.  Evidently he brushed against Katusha through wishing to pass Nekhludoff at a respectful distance, and Nekhludoff was surprised that he, the clerk, did not understand that everything here, yes, and in all the world, only existed for Katusha, and that everything else might remain unheeded, only not she, because she was the centre of all.  For her the gold glittered round the icons; for her all these candles in candelabra and candlesticks were alight; for her were sung these joyful hymns, “Behold the Passover of the Lord” “Rejoice, O ye people!” All—­all that was good in the world was for her.  And it seemed to him that Katusha was aware that it was all for her when he looked at her well-shaped figure, the tucked white dress, the wrapt, joyous expression of her face, by which he knew that just exactly the same that was singing in his own soul was also singing in hers.

In the interval between the early and the late mass Nekhludoff left the church.  The people stood aside to let him pass, and bowed.  Some knew him; others asked who he was.

He stopped on the steps.  The beggars standing there came clamouring round him, and he gave them all the change he had in his purse and went down.  It was dawning, but the sun had not yet risen.  The people grouped round the graves in the churchyard.  Katusha had remained inside.  Nekhludoff stood waiting for her.

The people continued coming out, clattering with their nailed boots on the stone steps and dispersing over the churchyard.  A very old man with shaking head, his aunts’ cook, stopped Nekhludoff in order to give him the Easter kiss, his old wife took an egg, dyed yellow, out of her handkerchief and gave it to Nekhludoff, and a smiling young peasant in a new coat and green belt also came up.