His aunts had expected Nekhludoff, had asked him to come and see them in passing, but he had telegraphed that he could not come, as he had to be in Petersburg at an appointed time.  When Katusha heard this she made up her mind to go to the station and see him.  The train was to pass by at two o’clock in the night.  Katusha having helped the old ladies to bed, and persuaded a little girl, the cook’s daughter, Mashka, to come with her, put on a pair of old boots, threw a shawl over her head, gathered up her dress, and ran to the station.

It was a warm, rainy, and windy autumn night.  The rain now pelted down in warm, heavy drops, now stopped again.  It was too dark to see the path across the field, and in the wood it was pitch black, so that although Katusha knew the way well, she got off the path, and got to the little station where the train stopped for three minutes, not before, as she had hoped, but after the second bell had been rung.  Hurrying up the platform, Katusha saw him at once at the windows of a first-class carriage.  Two officers sat opposite each other on the velvet-covered seats, playing cards.  This carriage was very brightly lit up; on the little table between the seats stood two thick, dripping candles.  He sat in his closefitting breeches on the arm of the seat, leaning against the back, and laughed.  As soon as she recognised him she knocked at the carriage window with her benumbed hand, but at that moment the last bell rang, and the train first gave a backward jerk, and then gradually the carriages began to move forward.  One of the players rose with the cards in his hand, and looked out.  She knocked again, and pressed her face to the window, but the carriage moved on, and she went alongside looking in.  The officer tried to lower the window, but could not.  Nekhludoff pushed him aside and began lowering it himself.  The train went faster, so that she had to walk quickly.  The train went on still faster and the window opened.  The guard pushed her aside, and jumped in.  Katusha ran on, along the wet boards of the platform, and when she came to the end she could hardly stop herself from falling as she ran down the steps of the platform.  She was running by the side of the railway, though the first-class carriage had long passed her, and the second-class carriages were gliding by faster, and at last the third-class carriages still faster.  But she ran on, and when the last carriage with the lamps at the back had gone by, she had already reached the tank which fed the engines, and was unsheltered from the wind, which was blowing her shawl about and making her skirt cling round her legs.  The shawl flew off her head, but still she ran on.

“Katerina Michaelovna, you’ve lost your shawl!” screamed the little girl, who was trying to keep up with her.

Katusha stopped, threw back her head, and catching hold of it with both hands sobbed aloud.  “Gone!” she screamed.

“He is sitting in a velvet arm-chair and joking and drinking, in a brightly lit carriage, and I, out here in the mud, in the darkness, in the wind and the rain, am standing and weeping,” she thought to herself; and sat down on the ground, sobbing so loud that the little girl got frightened, and put her arms round her, wet as she was.