‘What’s wrong with her?’ Pierre wondered as he glanced across. She was sitting next to her sister at the tea table, grudgingly responding to Boris at her side without bothering to look at him. After playing out a whole suit and taking five tricks, much to his partner’s satisfaction, Pierre was distracted by the sound of greetings and someone coming in, but he glanced at her again as he raked in his tricks.
‘What can have happened to her?’ he said to himself in even greater wonder.
Prince Andrey was standing in front of her, talking away with tender solicitude written all over his face. She was looking up at him, red as a beetroot and visibly trying to control her panicky breathing. And suddenly the flaming glow from some inner fire that had been doused until then was newly ablaze in her. She was utterly transformed. From being a plain creature she was once more the beautiful girl she had been at the ball.
Prince Andrey came over to Pierre, and Pierre noticed a new, youthful expression in his friend’s face too. Pierre changed places several times during the play, sitting sometimes with his back to Natasha and sometimes facing her, and through all six rubbers he kept a close watch on her and his friend.
‘There’s something very serious going on between those two,’ thought Pierre, suddenly assailed by a worrying feeling of joy mixed with bitterness that took his mind off the game.
At the end of six rubbers the general got to his feet, saying there was no point in playing like that, and Pierre was free to roam. Natasha was talking to Sonya and Boris on one side of the room. Vera was saying something to Prince Andrey with a subtle smile on her face. Pierre went over to his friend, asked whether he was intruding on any secrets and sat down beside them. Vera, having noticed Prince Andrey paying close attention to Natasha, felt that at a soirée, at a proper soirée, there really ought to be the odd gentle hint about the emotions, so she waited until Prince Andrey was on his own, struck up a conversation with him, mentioned emotions in general and then brought her sister into it. Dealing with such a clever man as Prince Andrey (which was how she saw him), she felt the need to handle this affair with tact and diplomacy. When Pierre came over and heard them talking he could see that Vera was getting carried away by her own self-confidence while Andrey seemed embarrassed – something that almost never happened to him.
‘What’s your opinion?’ Vera was asking with a subtle smile on her face. ‘Prince, you can see right through people. You can assess someone’s character at a glance. What do you think about Natalie? Is she capable of being constant in her attachments? Could she be like other women (she had herself in mind), love somebody once and for all and stay faithful to him for ever? That’s what I call true love! What do you think, Prince?’
‘I don’t know your sister all that well,’ answered Prince Andrey with a sardonic smile intended to cover his embarrassment, ‘so I can’t settle a delicate question like that. In any case, I’ve always noticed that the less attractive a woman is, the more faithful she tends to be,’ he added, looking round at Pierre as he joined them.
‘Yes, Prince, you’re quite right. In this day and age,’ Vera persisted (talking of ‘this day and age’ in the way that persons of limited intelligence generally love to do, all too certain they have discovered and carefully considered what is special about their day and age, and that human characteristics change with the times), ‘in this day and age a girl has so much liberty that the pleasure of receiving a lot of attention often suppresses her true feelings. And it has to be said that Natalie is very vulnerable in that area.’
This reversion to Natasha made Prince Andrey frown with annoyance. He made as if to get to his feet, but Vera persisted, with even greater subtlety in her smile.
‘I’m sure no one has received more attention than she has,’ Vera went on, ‘but until quite recently she hasn’t taken to anyone in particular. Now, you know, Count,’ she said, turning to Pierre, ‘not even our dear cousin, Boris, who, between ourselves, was very, very far gone in the land of tender feelings.’ (She was referring to a map of love much in fashion at that time.)
Prince Andrey scowled, saying nothing.
‘But you’re a friend of Boris’s, aren’t you?’ Vera said to him.
‘Yes, I do know him . . .’
‘He must have told you about his childish passion for Natasha.’
‘Oh, was there a childish passion?’ asked Prince Andrey with an unexpected rush of blood to his face.
‘Oh yes. You know how it is – close intimacy between boy and girl cousins sometimes leads to love. Cousins, cousins, dangers in dozens. Don’t you agree?’
