cking eyes still looked at
him. After his first visit Boris said to himself that Natasha attracted
him just as much as ever, but that he must not yield to that feeling,
because to marry her, a girl almost without fortune, would mean ruin to
his career, while to renew their former relations without intending to
marry her would be dishonorable. Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting
Natasha, but despite that resolution he called again a few days later
and began calling often and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It
seemed to him that he ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell
her that the old times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything...
she could not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never
let her marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about
entering on such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more
entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in love
with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him her
album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to the past,
letting it be understood how delightful was the present; and every day
he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and not
knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end. He
left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her every
day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.

CHAPTER XIII

One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,
without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing
under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and
bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also in
a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in
curlpapers, ran in. The countess--her prayerful mood dispelled--looked
round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be that
this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager, seeing
her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down, and
unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing that
her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and, rapidly
slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her slippers and
jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might become her grave. This
couch was high, with a feather bed and five pillows each smaller than
the one below. Natasha jumped on it