d
clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone began
shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought this
strange. She looked about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.

"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.

"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.

CHAPTER X

During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the
door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush
against anyone.

"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting
uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.

Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young officer
and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was as handsome
at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her and told her he
had long wished to have this happiness--ever since the Naryshkins' ball
in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered pleasure of seeing her.
Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with women than among men.
He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha was strangely and agreeably
struck by the fact that there was nothing formidable in this man about
whom there was so much talk, but that on the contrary his smile was most
naive, cheerful, and good-natured.

Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a
previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.

"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as an
old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume tournament; you
ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We shall all meet at the
Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said he.

While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face, her
neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was enraptured
by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel constrained and
oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt that he was looking
at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his eye so that he should
look into hers rather than this. But looking into his eyes she was
frightened, realizing that there was not that barrier of modesty she had
always felt between herself and other men. She did not know how it was
that within five minutes she had come to feel herself terribly near to
this man. When she turned away she feared he might seize her from behind
by her bare arm and kiss her on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary
things, yet she felt that they were closer