Book 1 Chapter 17 Nekhludoff and Katusha

And so the evening passed and night came. The doctor went to bed.
Nekhludoff's aunts had also retired, and he knew that Matrona
Pavlovna was now with them in their bedroom so that Katusha was
sure to be alone in the maids' sitting-room. He again went out
into the porch. It was dark, damp and warm out of doors, and that
white spring mist which drives away the last snow, or is diffused
by the thawing of the last snow, filled the air. From the river
under the hill, about a hundred steps from the front door, came a
strange sound. It was the ice breaking. Nekhludoff came down the
steps and went up to the window of the maids' room, stepping over
the puddles on the bits of glazed snow. His heart was beating so
fiercely in his breast that he seemed to hear it, his laboured
breath came and went in a burst of long-drawn sighs. In the
maids' room a small lamp was burning, and Katusha sat alone by
the table, looking thoughtfully in front of her. Nekhludoff stood
a long time without moving and waited to see what she, not
knowing that she was observed, would do. For a minute or two she
did not move; then she lifted her eyes, smiled and shook her head
as if chiding herself, then changed her pose and dropped both her
arms on the table and again began gazing down in front of her. He
stood and looked at her, involuntarily listening to the beating
of his own heart and the strange sounds from the river. There on
the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing labour went on,
and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping, being
shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of
ice as they broke against each other like glass.