“Christ is risen,” he said, with laughing eyes, and coming close to Nekhludoff he enveloped him in his peculiar but pleasant peasant smell, and, tickling him with his curly beard, kissed him three times straight on the mouth with his firm, fresh lips.

While the peasant was kissing Nekhludoff and giving him a dark brown egg, the lilac dress of Matrona Pavlovna and the dear black head with the red bow appeared.

Katusha caught sight of him over the heads of those in front of her, and he saw how her face brightened up.

She had come out with Matrona Pavlovna on to the porch, and stopped there distributing alms to the beggars.  A beggar with a red scab in place of a nose came up to Katusha.  She gave him something, drew nearer him, and, evincing no sign of disgust, but her eyes still shining with joy, kissed him three times.  And while she was doing this her eyes met Nekhludoff’s with a look as if she were asking, “Is this that I am doing right?” “Yes, dear, yes, it is right; everything is right, everything is beautiful.  I love!”

They came down the steps of the porch, and he came up to them.

He did not mean to give them the Easter kiss, but only to be nearer to her.  Matrona Pavlovna bowed her head, and said with a smile, “Christ is risen!” and her tone implied, “To-day we are all equal.”  She wiped her mouth with her handkerchief rolled into a ball and stretched her lips towards him.

“He is, indeed,” answered Nekhludoff, kissing her.  Then he looked at Katusha; she blushed, and drew nearer.  “Christ is risen, Dmitri Ivanovitch.”  “He is risen, indeed,” answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed twice, then paused as if considering whether a third kiss were necessary, and, having decided that it was, kissed a third time and smiled.

“You are going to the priests?” asked Nekhludoff.

“No, we shall sit out here a bit, Dmitri Ivanovitch,” said Katusha with effort, as if she had accomplished some joyous task, and, her whole chest heaving with a deep sigh, she looked straight in his face with a look of devotion, virgin purity, and love, in her very slightly squinting eyes.

In the love between a man and a woman there always comes a moment when this love has reached its zenith—­a moment when it is unconscious, unreasoning, and with nothing sensual about it.  Such a moment had come for Nekhludoff on that Easter eve.  When he brought Katusha back to his mind, now, this moment veiled all else; the smooth glossy black head, the white tucked dress closely fitting her graceful maidenly form, her, as yet, un-developed bosom, the blushing cheeks, the tender shining black eyes with their slight squint heightened by the sleepless night, and her whole being stamped with those two marked features, purity and chaste love, love not only for him (he knew that), but for everybody and everything, not for the good alone, but for all that is in the world, even for that beggar whom she had kissed.