356 357
“Why, what is important?” said Kitty, looking into her face with
inquisitive wonder.
“Oh, there’s so much that’s important,” said Varenka, smiling.
“Why, what?”
“Oh, so much that’s more important,” answered Varenka, not know-
ing what to say. But at that instant they heard the princess’s voice from
the window. “Kitty, it’s cold! Either get a shawl, or come indoors.”
“It really is time to go in!” said Varenka, getting up. “I have to go on
to Madame Berthe’s; she asked me to.”
Kitty held her by the hand, and with passionate curiosity and en-
treaty her eyes asked her: “What is it, what is this of such importance
that gives you such tranquillity? You know, tell me!” But Varenka did
not even know what Kitty’s eyes were asking her. She merely thought
that she had to go to see Madame Berthe too that evening, and to
make haste home in time for maman’s tea at twelve o’clock. She went
indoors, collected her music, and saying good-bye to everyone, was
about to go.
“Allow me to see you home,” said the colonel.
“Yes, how can you go alone at night like this?” chimed in the prin-
cess. “Anyway, I’ll send Parasha.”
Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly restrain a smile at the idea
that she needed an escort.
“No, I always go about alone and nothing ever happens to me,” she
said, taking her hat. And kissing Kitty once more, without saying what
was important, she stepped out courageously with the music under her
arm and vanished into the twilight of the summer night, bearing away
with her her secret of what was important and what gave her the calm
and dignity so much to be envied.
Chapter 33.
Kitty made the acquaintance of Madame Stahl too, and this ac-
quaintance, together with her friendship with Varenka, did not merely
exercise a great influence on her, it also comforted her in her mental
distress. She found this comfort through a completely new world being
opened to her by means of this acquaintance, a world having nothing
in common with her past, an exalted, noble world, from the height of
which she could contemplate her past calmly. It was revealed to her
that besides the instinctive life to which Kitty had given herself up
hitherto there was a spiritual life. This life was disclosed in religion, but
a religion having nothing in common with that one which Kitty had
known from childhood, and which found expression in litanies and all-
night services at the Widow’s Home, where one might meet one’s
friends, and in learning by heart Slavonic texts with the priest. This
was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole series of noble
thoughts and feelings, which one could do more than merely believe
because one was told to, which one could love.
Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to
Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as on the
memory of one’s youth, and only once she said in passing that in all
human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and faith, and that in
the sight of Christ’s compassion for us no sorrow is trifling—and im-