to one another than she had
ever been to any man. Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father,
as if asking what it all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation
with a general and did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said
nothing but what they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad
of it!"

During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's prominent
eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to break the
silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the question and
blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she was doing
something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage her.

"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant
ce sont les jolies femmes, * isn't that so? But now I like it very much
indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the
costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to her
bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the prettiest
there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as a pledge!"

* Are the pretty women.

Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did
himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an improper
intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if she had
not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she felt that
he was there, behind, so close behind her.

"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked
herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked
straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the
good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just
as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt with
horror that no barrier lay between him and her.

The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay. Natasha
went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive to the
world she found herself in. All that was going on before her now seemed
quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous thoughts of her
betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country did not once
recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote past.

In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his arm
about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he disappeared
down below. That was the only part of the fourth act that Natasha saw.
She