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Updated: June 10, 2025
She was probably awake, or else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as he had whispered "Katusha" she jumped up and began to persuade him, as if angrily, to go away. "Open! Let me in just for a moment! I implore you!" He hardly knew what he was saying.
The 25 roubles soon went; some she paid to her aunt for board and lodging; the rest was spent on a hat, ribbons, and such like. A few days later the author sent for her, and she went. He gave her another 25 roubles, and offered her a separate lodging. Next door to the lodging rented for her by the author there lived a jolly young shopman, with whom Katusha soon fell in love.
The woman received her very kindly, set cake and sweet wine before her, then wrote a note and gave it to a servant to take to somebody. In the evening a tall man, with long, grey hair and a white beard, entered the room, and sat down at once near Katusha, smiling and gazing at her with glistening eyes. He began joking with her.
She lived in this manner till she was sixteen, when the nephew of the old ladies, a rich young prince, and a university student, came to stay with his aunts, and Katusha, not daring to acknowledge it even to herself, fell in love with him.
She offered Katusha the place of an assistant laundress; but seeing what a life of misery and hardship her aunt's assistants led, Katusha hesitated, and applied to a registry office for a place. One was found for her with a lady who lived with her two sons, pupils at a public day school.
Nekhludoff went out in silence, but he did not even feel ashamed. He could see by Matrona Pavlovna's face that she was blaming him, he knew that she was blaming him with reason and felt that he was doing wrong, but this novel, low animal excitement, having freed itself of all the old feelings of real love for Katusha, ruled supreme, leaving room for nothing else.
Yet, when he was going away, and Katusha stood with his aunts in the porch, and looked after him, her dark, slightly-squinting eyes filled with tears, he felt, after all, that he was leaving something beautiful, precious, something which would never reoccur. And he grew very sad. "Good-bye, Katusha," he said, looking across Sophia Ivanovna's cap as he was getting into the trap.
"Yes, I must tell her," he thought; "no hiding; everybody must be told." "A very strange and important thing happened to me yesterday. Do you remember my Aunt Mary Ivanovna's Katusha?" "Oh, yes. Why, I taught her how to sew." "Well, this Katusha was tried in the Court and I was on the jury." "Oh, Lord! What a pity!" cried Agraphena Petrovna. "What was she being tried for?"
Nekhludoff had arranged to stay only a day and night with his aunts, but when he had seen Katusha he agreed to stay over Easter with them and telegraphed to his friend Schonbock, whom he was to have joined in Odessa, that he should come and meet him at his aunts' instead. As soon as he had seen Katusha Nekhludoff's old feelings toward her awoke again.
Two questions regarding her brother now interested Nathalie: his marriage with Katusha, which she had heard spoken about in their town for everybody was speaking about it and his giving away the land to the peasants, which was also known, and struck many as something of a political nature, and dangerous. The marriage with Katusha pleased her in a way.
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