thought of reading the New Testament to criminals, as this Aline had done, especially appealed to Kitty. But she indulged in these dreams secretly, without telling them to her mother or even to her friend.
However, while she was waiting to be able to carry out her schemes on a wider scale, it was easy for Kitty to put her new principles in practice at the waters, even then and there at the Spa, where the sick and unhappy are easily found, and she did as Varenka did.
The princess swiftly noticed that Kitty had fallen under the powerful influence of her engouement with Madame Stahl (as she called it), and particularly with Varenka. She saw that Kitty imitated Varenka, not only in her deeds of charity, but even in her gait, in her speech, in her ways of shutting her eyes. Later she discovered that her daughter was passing through a sort of crisis of the soul quite independent of the influence of her friends.
The princess saw that Kitty was reading the Gospels evenings in a French Testament loaned her by Madame Stahl,—a thing which she had never done before. She also noticed that she avoided her society friends, and gave her time to the sick under Varenka's care, and particularly to the poor family of a sick painter named Petrof.
Kitty seemed proud to fill, in this household, the functions of a sister of charity. All this was very good; and the princess had no fault to find with it, and opposed it all the less from the fact that Petrof's wife was a woman of good family, and that one day the Fürstin, noticing Kitty's charitable activity, had praised her, and called her the " ministering angel." All would have been very good if it had not been carried to excess. But the princess saw that her daughter was going to extremes, so she spoke to her about it.
"Il ne faut rien outrer—One must never go to extremes," she said to her.
But her daughter made no reply; she only questioned from the bottom of her heart whether one could ever talk about going to extremes in the matter of religion.
