away her tears.

"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to
sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could
speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he thought,
"must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should certainly
be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can always
sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to himself,
"but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that feeling is for me
stronger and higher than all else."

Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the
conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and sometimes
with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment between her son and
the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself for it, she could
not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya, often pulling her
up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my dear," and using the
formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in speaking to her. The
kindhearted countess was the more vexed with Sonya because that poor,
dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind, so devotedly grateful to
her benefactors, and so faithfully, unchangingly, and unselfishly in
love with Nicholas, that there were no grounds for finding fault with
her.

Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter had
come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he would have
been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound unexpectedly
reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to defer his return till
the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still as much in love with
her betrothed, found the same comfort in that love, and was still as
ready to throw herself into all the pleasures of life as before; but at
the end of the fourth month of their separation she began to have fits
of depression which she could not master. She felt sorry for herself:
sorry that she was being wasted all this time and of no use to
anyone--while she felt herself so capable of loving and being loved.

Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.

CHAPTER IX

Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and
wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and the
new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities, though
the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine by day,
and the starlight