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 Kitty saw that Varenka could hardly keep from smiling at the idea that she needed any one to go home with her.

"No; I always go home alone, and nothing ever happens to me," said she, taking her hat, and after kissing Kitty again, though she did not tell her "the one important thing," she hurried away with firm steps, her music-roll under her arm, and disappeared in the semi-darkness of the summer night, carrying with her her secret of "what is important" and what gave her her enviable calmness and dignity.

CHAPTER XXXIII

also made Madame Stahl's acquaintance, and her relations with this lady and her friendship with Varenka had not only a powerful influence on her, but also soothed her grief.

She found this consolation in the fact that, through this friendship, there opened before her an entirely new world, which had nothing in common with her past,—a beautiful, supernal world, from the lofty heights of which she could look down calmly on her past. She discovered that this world, which was entirely apart from the instinctive life which she had hitherto led, was the spiritual life. This life was reached by religion,—a religion which had nothing in common with the religion to which Kitty had been accustomed since infancy, a religion which consisted of going to morning and evening service, and to the House of Widows, where she met her acquaintances, or of learning by heart Slavonic texts with the parish priest. This was a lofty, mystic religion, united with the purest thoughts and feelings, and believed in not because one was commanded to do so, but through love.

Kitty learned all this, but not by words. Madame Stahl talked to her as to a dear child whom she loved as the type of her own youth, and only once did she