"Worse than wrong--shameful."
Varenka shook her head and laid her hand on Kitty's hand.
"Why, what is there shameful?" she said. "You didn't tell a man, who didn't care for you, that you loved him, did you?"
"Of course not; I never said a word, but he knew it.
No, no, there are looks, there are ways; I can't forget it, if I live a hundred years."
"Why so?
I don't understand.
The whole point is whether you love him now or not," said Varenka, who called everything by its name.
"I hate him; I can't forgive myself."
"Why, what for?"
"The shame, the humiliation!"
"Oh! if everyone were as sensitive as you are!" said Varenka. "There isn't a girl who hasn't been through the same.
And it's all so unimportant."
"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 knowing 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 entreaty 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 princess. "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 acquaintance, 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 immediately talked of other things.
But in every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every heavenly--as Kitty called it--look, and above all in the whole story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized that something "that was important," of which, till then, she had known nothing.
Yet, elevated as Madame Stahl's character was, touching as was her story, and exalted and moving as was her speech, Kitty could not help detecting in her some traits which perplexed her.
She noticed that when questioning her about her family, Madame Stahl had smiled contemptuously, which was not in accord with Christian meekness.
She noticed, too, that when she had found a Catholic priest with her, Madame Stahl had studiously kept her face in the shadow of the lamp-shade and had smiled in a peculiar way.
Trivial as these two observations were, they perplexed her, and she had her doubts as to Madame Stahl.
But on the other hand Varenka, alone in the world, without friends or relations, with a melancholy disappointment in the past, desiring nothing, regretting nothing, was just that perfection of which Kitty dared hardly dream.
In Varenka she realized that one has but to forget oneself and love others, and one will be calm, happy, and noble.
And that was what Kitty longed to be.
Seeing now clearly what was _the most important_, Kitty was not satisfied with being enthusiastic over it; she at once gave herself up with her whole soul to the new life that was opening to her.
From Varenka's accounts of the doings of Madame Stahl and other people whom she mentioned, Kitty had already constructed the plan of her own future life.