In one of the moments of awkward silence, during which Anatole gazed calmly and persistently at her, Natasha, to break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. Natasha asked this question and blushed as she did so; she was feeling all the while that there she was doing something improper in talking to him. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.
‘At first I didn’t like it much, for what is it makes one like a town? It’s the pretty women, isn’t it? Well, but now I like it awfully,’ he said, with a meaning look at her. ‘You’ll come to the fancy dress ball, countess? Do come,’ he said, and putting his hand out to her bouquet he said,
Iropping his voice, ‘You will be the prettiest. Come, dear countess, and is a pledge give me this flower.’
Natasha did not understand what he was saying, nor did he himself; iut she felt that in his uncomprehended words there was some improper ntention. She did not know what to say, and turned away as though he had not heard what he said. But as soon as she turned away she elt that he was here behind her, so close to her.
‘What is he feeling now? Is he confused? Is he angry? Must I set it ight?’ she wondered. She could not refrain from looking round. She ;lanced straight into his eyes, and his nearness and confidence, and the imple-hearted warmth of his smile vanquished her. She smiled exactly is he did, looking straight into his eyes. And again, she felt with horror hat no barrier lay between him and her.
The curtain rose again. Anatole walked out of the box, serene and ;ood-humoured. Natasha went back to her father’s box, completely under he spell of the world in which she found herself. All that passed before ler eyes now seemed to her perfectly natural. But on the other hand all irevious thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Marya, of her life in the ountry, did not once recur to her mind, as though all that belonged |p the remote past.
In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang, waving his rms till the boards were moved away under him and he sank into the pening. That was all Natasha saw of the fourth act; she felt harassed nd excited; and the cause of that excitement was Kuragin, whom she ould not help watching. As they came out of the theatre Anatole came lip to them, called their carriage and helped them into it. As he assisted •latasha he pressed her arm above the elbow. Natasha, flushed and xcited, looked round at him. He gazed at her with flashing eyes and a ender smile.
It was only on getting home that Natasha could form any clear idea f what had happened. All at once, remembering Prince Andrey, she was iorrified, and at tea, to which they all sat down after the theatre, she roaned aloud, and flushing crimson ran out of the room. ‘My God! I m ruined!’ she said to herself. ‘How could I sink to such a depth?’ she hought. For a long while she sat, with her flushed face hidden in her lands, trying to get a clear idea of what had happened and unable to rasp either what had happened or what she was feeling. Everything eemed to her dark, obscure, and dreadful. In that immense, lighted hall, vhere Duport had jumped about to music with his bare legs on the damp ioards in his short jacket with tinsel, and young girls and old men, and hat Ellen, proudly and serenely smiling in her nakedness, had enthusi- stically roared ‘bravo’; there, in the wake of that Ellen, all had been lear and simple. But now, alone by herself, it was past comprehending. What does it mean? What is that terror I felt with him? What is the neaning of those gnawings of conscience I am feeling now?’ she thought.
To no one but to her mother at night in bed Natasha could have talked
I I
of what she was feeling. Sonya she knew, with her strict and single-1 minded view of things, would either have failed to understand at all! or would have been horrified at the avowal. Natasha all by herself had to try and solve the riddle that tormented her.
‘Am I spoilt for Prince Audrey’s love or not?’ she asked herself, and with reassuring mockery she answered herself: ‘What a fool I am to ask such a thing! What has happened to me? Nothing. I have done nothing; I did nothing to lead him on. No one will ever know, and I shall never- see him again,’ she told herself. ‘So it’s plain that nothing has« happened, that there’s nothing to regret, that Prince Andrey can love me still. But why still? O my God, my God, why isn’t he here! ’ Natasha felt comforted for a moment; but again some instinct told her that though that was all true, and though nothing had happened, yet some instinct told her that all the old purity of her love for Prince Andrey was lost. And again, in her imagination, she went over all her conversation with Kuragin, and saw again the face, the gestures, and the tender smile of that handsome, daring man at the moment when he had pressed her arm.
XI
