She talked on, mingling up the most insignificant details with the mo. secret feelings of her heart, and it seemed as though she could neve finish. Several times she said the same thing twice.
Dessalle’s voice was heard at We door asking whether Nikolushk might come into say good-night. ‘And that is all, all . . .’ said Natash; She got up quickly at the moment Nikolushka was coming in, and almos running to the door, knocked her head against it as it was hidden by th portiere, and with a moan, half of pain, half of sorrow, she rushed out c the room.
Pierre gazed at the door by which she had gone out, and wondered wh he felt suddenly alone in the wide world.
Princess Marya roused him from his abstraction, calling his attentio to her nephew who had just come into the room.
The face of Nikolushka, so like his father, had such an effect on Pierr at this moment of emotional tension, that, after kissing the child, he go up himself, and taking out his handkerchief, walked away to the window He would have taken leave, but Princess Marya would not let him go.
‘No, Natasha and I often do not go to bed till past two, please stay little longer. We will have supper. Go downstairs, we will come in moment.’
Before Pierre went down, the princess said to him: ‘It is the first tim she has talked of him like this.’
XVII
Pierre was conducted into the big, lighted-up dining-room. In a fei minutes he heard footsteps and the princess and Natasha came into th
WAR AND PEACE 105!
10m. Natasha was calm, though the stern, unsmiling expression had ime back again now into her face. Princess Marya, Natasha, and Pierre ;1 equally experienced that feeling of awkwardness which usually fol- Iws when a serious and deeply felt conversation is over. To continue on le same subject is impossible; to speak o( trivial matters seems desecra- nn, and to be silent is unpleasant, because one wants to talk, and this :ence seems a sort ol affectation. In silence they came to the table. The lotmen drew back and pushed up the chairs. Pierre unfolded his cold mner napkin, and making up his mind to break the silence he glanced at latasha and at Princess Marya. Both had plainly reached the same de- r,ion at the same moment; in the eyes of both there gleamed a satisfac- nn with life, and an admission that there was gladness in it as well as ;rrow.
‘Do you drink vodka?’ said Princess Marya, and those words at once (spelled the shadows of the past.
‘Tell us about yourself,’ said Princess Marya; ‘such incredibly marvel- las stories are being told about you.’
‘Yes,’ answered Pierre, with the gentle smile of irony that had now lcome habitual with him. ‘I myself am told of marvels that I never (earned of. Marya Abramovna invited me to come and see her and kept 1 ling me what had happened to me, or ought to have happened. Stepan lepanovitch too instructed me how I was to tell my story. Altogether I 1 ve noticed that to be an interesting person is a very easy position 1 am now an interesting person); people invite me and then tell me all £ out it.’
Natasha smiled and was about to say something.
‘We have been told that you lost two millions in Moscow. Is that true?’ ‘Oh, I am three times as rich,’ said Pierre. In spite of the strain on his irtune, of his wife’s debts, and the necessity of rebuilding, Pierre still ad that he had become three times as rich.
‘What I have undoubtedly gained,’ he said, ‘is freedom . . .’ he was 1 ginning seriously; but on second thoughts he did not continue, feeling tit it was too egoistic a subject.
|j‘And you are building?’
/es, such are Savelitch’s orders.’
‘Tell me, you had not heard of the countess’s death when you stayed ( in Moscow?’ said Princess Marya; and she Hushed crimson at once, (ascious that in putting this question to him after his mention of ‘free- cm,’ she was ascribing a significance to his words which was possibly i't intended.
‘No,’ answered Pierre, obviously unconscious of any awkwardness in t; interpretation Princess Marya had put on his allusion to his freedom. ‘ heard of it in Orel, and you cannot imagine how it affected me. We vre not an exemplary couple,’ he said quickly, glancing at Natasha and (tecting in her face curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, ‘ut her death affected me greatly. When two people quarrel, both are ivays in fault. And one becomes terribly aware of one’s shortcomings
towards any one who is no more. And then such a death . . . apart frc friends and consolation. I felt very sorry for her,’ he concluded, a: noticed with satisfaction a glad look of approval on Natasha’s face.
‘And so you are once more an eligible parti,'' said Princess Marya.
Pierre flushed suddenly crimson; and for a long while he tried not look at Natasha. When he did venture to glance at her, her face was cc and severe, even, he fancied, disdainful.
‘But did you really see and talk to Napoleon, as we have been tok said Princess Marya.
Pierre laughed.
