Page:Leo Tolstoy - Father Sergius and Other Stories and Plays - ed. Charles Theodore Hagberg Wright (1911).djvu/70

 64 He put his face close to the window. The little ikon lamp was reflected in the glass. He put his hands up to his face and peered between them. Fog, mist, darkness, a tree, and—at the right—she herself, a woman in thick white furs, in a fur cap, with a lovely, lovely, gentle, frightened face, two inches away, leaning towards him. Their eyes met and they recognized each other—not because they had ever seen each other before. They had never met. But in the look they exchanged they felt—and he particularly—that they knew each other, that they understood.

After that glance which they exchanged how could he entertain any further doubt that this was the devil instead of just a sweet, timid, frightened woman?

"Who are you? Why have you come?" he asked.

"Open the door, I say," she said with whimsical authority. "I tell you I've lost my way."

"But I am a monk—a hermit."

"Open that door all the same. Do you want me to freeze while you say your prayers?"

"But how"

"I won't eat you. Let me in, for God's sake! I'm quite frozen."

She began to be really frightened, and spoke almost tearfully.