“Come, come, Natásha!” said the count, as he turned back for his daughter. “How beautiful she is!” Natásha without saying anything stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring eyes.
After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess Bezúkhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.
The count wished to go home, but Hélène entreated him not to spoil her improvised ball, and the Rostóvs stayed on. Anatole asked Natásha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the écossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natásha lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.
“Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,” she said rapidly. . . She glanced at him.
Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.
“Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?” said he. “I tell you I am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are enchanting?. . . It's our turn to begin.”
Natásha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly anything that went on that evening. They danced the écossaise and the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Hélène had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Hélène had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender voice:
“I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never see you? I love you madly. Can I never. . .?” and, blocking her path, he brought his face close to hers.
His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she saw nothing but them.
“Natalie?” he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being painfully pressed. “Natalie?”
“I don't understand. I have nothing to say,” her eyes replied.
Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she felt herself released, and Hélène's footsteps and the rustle of her dress were heard in the room. Natásha looked round at her, and then, red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and moved toward the door.
“One word, just one, for God's sake!” cried Anatole.
She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.
“Natalie, just a word, only one!” he kept repeating, evidently not knowing what to say and he repeated it till Hélène came up to them.
Hélène returned with Natásha to the drawing room. The Rostóvs went away without staying for supper.
After reaching home Natásha did not sleep all night. She was tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew—she remembered distinctly how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there was no doubt. “Else how could all this have happened?” thought she. “If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one too?” she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible questions.
CHAPTER XIV
Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Márya Dmítrievna appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natásha kept looking uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the same as usual.
After breakfast, which was her best time, Márya Dmítrievna sat down in her armchair and called Natásha and the count to her.
“Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is my advice,” she began. “Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince Bolkónski. Well, I had a talk with him. . . He took it into his head to begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had to say!”
