ut recovered and went
on quietly:

"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I have
now become quite calm, quite calm."

The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which
she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the
mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she had
abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went to
the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud resonance, and
began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished her first exercise
she stood still in the middle of the room and sang a musical phrase that
particularly pleased her. She listened joyfully (as though she had not
expected it) to the charm of the notes reverberating, filling the
whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying away; and all at once she felt
cheerful. "What's the good of making so much of it? Things are nice as
it is," she said to herself, and she began walking up and down the room,
not stepping simply on the resounding parquet but treading with each
step from the heel to the toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of
shoes) and listening to the regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe
as gladly as she had to the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror
she glanced into it. "There, that's me!" the expression of her face
seemed to say as she caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too!
I need nobody."

A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room but she
would not let him, and having closed the door behind him continued her
walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite mood--love of, and
delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha is!" she said again,
speaking as some third, collective, male person. "Pretty, a good voice,
young, and in nobody's way if only they leave her in peace." But
however much they left her in peace she could not now be at peace, and
immediately felt this.

In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and
then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but did
not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When she saw
herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for certain, though
she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.

Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.

"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is
unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I t