her, but merely wished to be by her side.

"Christ has risen!" said Matriena Pavlovna, leaning her head forward
and smiling. By the intonation of her voice she seemed to say, "All
are equal to-day," and wiping her mouth with a bandana handkerchief
which she kept under her arm-pit, she extended her lips.

"He has risen, indeed," answered Nekhludoff, and they kissed each
other.

He turned to look at Katiousha. She flushed and at the same moment
approached him.

"Christ has risen, Dmitri Ivanovich."

"He has risen, indeed," he said. They kissed each other twice, and
seemed to be reflecting whether or not it was necessary to kiss a
third time, and having decided, as it were, that it was necessary,
they kissed again.

"Will you go to the priest?" asked Nekhludoff.

"No, we will stay here, Dmitri Ivanovich," answered Katiousha,
laboriously, as though after hard, pleasant exertion, breathing with
her full breast and looking straight in his eyes, with her submissive,
chaste, loving and slightly squinting eyes.

There is a point in the love between man and woman when that love
reaches its zenith; when it is free from consciousness, reason and
sensuality. Such a moment arrived for Nekhludoff that Easter morn.