She drew nearer and without knowing how it happened he bent his face towards her; she did not draw back, he pressed her hand tighter and kissed her on the lips. 

‘Well I declare!’ she said, and freeing her hand with a quick movement she ran away from him.

   Running up to a lilac bush, she broke off two branches of white lilac which was already beginning to drop, and tapping her burning face with them and looking round at him she went to rejoin the other players, swinging her arms briskly in front of her.

    From that moment relations between  Nekhlyudov and Katusha were changed and the sort of connexion was established which often exists between an innocent young man and an equally innocent young girl, who are attracted to one another.

    The instant Katya entered the room, or if he saw her white apron from a distance, it was as if the sun had come out: everything seemed more interesting, gayer, and life held more meaning and was happier. And she felt the same. But it was not only Katusha’s presence or the fact that she was near that had this effect on Nekhlyudov: the mere thought that Katusha existed, and for her that Nekhlyudov existed, produced the same effect. If Nekhlyudov received an unpleasant letter from his mother, or could not get on with his thesis, or if he felt sad for no reason, the way young people do - he had only to think that there was a Katusha and he would be seeing her, and all his troubles would vanish. 

    Katusha had much to do about the house but she managed to get through it, and her spare time she would spend reading. Nekhlyudov gave her Dostoyevsky and Turgenyev, whom he had just finished reading himself. She liked Turgenyev’s A quiet Nook best. They talked in snatches, when they met in a passage, on the veranda or in the yard, and occasionally in the room which Katusha shared with his aunts’ old maid, Matriona Pavlona, and where Nekhlyudov sometimes went to drink unsweetened tea and suck bits of sugar. And it was these talks in Matriona Pavlona’s presence which were the most enjoyable. When they were alone it was worse. Their eyes at once began to say something very different and far more important than what their lips were saying; their mouths seemed shuttered, and a strange unaccountable fear made them part hurriedly.

      Such were the relations between Nekhlyudov and Katusha right to the end of his first visit to his aunts. The aunts noticed, took alarm and even wrote aboard to princess Helena Ivanovna, Nekhlydov’s mother. Aunt Marya Ivanovna was afraid lest Nekhlyudov should form an illicit liaison with Katusha. But there was no danger of that. Though he did not know it, Nekhlyudov loved Katusha with an innocent love, and his love was his main shield against his downfall and against hers. He not only had no desire to possess her physically but the very thought of such a possibility filled him with horror. There was much more foundation for the fears of the romantic Sophia Ivanovna that Smitri, with his uncompromising, determined character, having fallen in love with the girl, might take into his head to marry her without ever considering her birth or station in life. 

    Had Nekhlydov at the time clearly understood his feelings for Katusha, and especially had they tried to argue and tell him that he could not and must not link his destiny with a girl in her position, it might very easily have happened that, being entirely straightforward, he would have come to the conclusion that there could be no possible reason against his marrying a girl, no matter who she was, so long as he loved her. But his aunts did not mention their fears to him, and so he left, still unaware of his love for Katusha. 

    He was sure that his feeling for Katusha was simply one of the manifestations of the joy of life that filled his whole being and was shared by that sweet, light-hearted girl. Yet for all that he was going away and Katusha, standing on the porch with his aunts, saw him off with her black eyes that had a slight cast full of tears, he was conscious of leaving behind him something beautiful precious, which could never be repeated. And he grew very sad. 

    ‘Goodbye, Dmitri Ivanovich,’ she said in her agreeable, caressing voice, and, keeping back the tears which filled her eyes, ran into the hall, where she could cry her fill.