"Is it you, Katiousha? Come in," he said, rising.

She opened the door.

"You are wanted to breakfast," she said. She was in the same white
dress, but without the bow in her hair.

As she looked in his eyes she brightened up, as if she had announced
something unusually pleasant.

"I shall come immediately," he answered, taking a comb to rearrange
his hair.

She lingered for a moment. He noticed it, and putting down the comb,
he moved toward her. But at the same moment she quickly turned and
walked off with her customary light and agile step along the narrow
mat of the corridor.

"What a fool I am!" Nekhludoff said to himself. "Why did I not detain
her?" And he ran after her.

He did not know himself what he wished of her, but it seemed to him
that when she entered his room he ought to have done something that
any one in his place would have done, but which he failed to do.

"Wait, Katiousha," he said.

She looked around.