the purpose at which she
was aiming.

The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's breast,
while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.

Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded
that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not
be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything
without his parents' knowledge.

Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,
to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,
sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,
passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his
regiment.

After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more
depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.

Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more so on
account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting toward
her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of his
affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house and
estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they had
to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay their
departure from day to day.

Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her betrothed
lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and impatient every
day. The thought that her best days, which she would have employed
in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no advantage to anyone,
tormented her incessantly. His letters for the most part irritated her.
It hurt her to think that while she lived only in the thought of him, he
was living a real life, seeing new places and new people that interested
him. The more interesting his letters were the more vexed she felt.
Her letters to him, far from giving her any comfort, seemed to her a
wearisome and artificial obligation. She could not write, because she
could not conceive the possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter
even a thousandth part of what she expressed by voice, smile, and
glance. She wrote to him formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which
she attached no importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the
countess corrected her mistakes in spelling.

There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was
impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's
trou