ld you
mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.

Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed her
wet face against her.

"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha--"It's
my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he come?..."

She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew how
the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how upset
Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the count and
the other guests.

CHAPTER VIII

That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya Dmitrievna
had taken a box.

Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya Dmitrievna's kind
offer which was intended expressly for her. When she came ready dressed
into the ballroom to await her father, and looking in the large mirror
there saw that she was pretty, very pretty, she felt even more sad, but
it was a sweet, tender sadness.

"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those searching
inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me, and then I would
make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how I see those eyes!"
thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister matter to me? I
love him alone, him, him, with that face and those eyes, with his smile,
manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not think of him; not think
of him but forget him, quite forget him for the present. I can't bear
this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!" and she turned away from the
glass, making an effort not to cry. "And how can Sonya love Nicholas
so calmly and quietly and wait so long and so patiently?" thought she,
looking at Sonya, who also came in quite ready, with a fan in her hand.
"No, she's altogether different. I can't!"

Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words of
love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside her
father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps flickering on
the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in love, and forgot
where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into the line of
carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the theater, its