Book 1 Chapter 37 Maslova Recalls the Past

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.