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This was a lofty, mysterious religion connected with a whole

series of noble thoughts and feelings, which one could do more

than merely believe because one was told to, which one could

love.

Kitty found all this out not from words. Madame Stahl talked to

Kitty as to a charming child that one looks on with pleasure as

on the memory of one's youth, and only once she said in passing

that in all human sorrows nothing gives comfort but love and

faith, and that in the sight of Christ's compassion for us no

sorrow is trifling-and immediately talked of other things. But in

every gesture of Madame Stahl, in every word, in every

heavenly-as Kitty called it-look, and above all in the whole

story of her life, which she heard from Varenka, Kitty recognized

that something "that was important," of which, till then, she had

known nothing.