felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of this was Kuragin whom
she could not help watching. As they were leaving the theater Anatole
came up to them, called their carriage, and helped them in. As he was
putting Natasha in he pressed her arm above the elbow. Agitated and
flushed she turned round. He was looking at her with glittering eyes,
smiling tenderly.

Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think over
what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince Andrew she
was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after the opera, she
gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the room.

"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?" She sat
for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to realize
what had happened to her, but was unable either to understand what
had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark, obscure,
and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater where the
bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped about to the
music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the nearly naked
Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried "bravo!"--there in
the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear and simple; but now,
alone by herself, it was incomprehensible. "What is it? What was that
terror I felt of him? What is this gnawing of conscience I am feeling
now?" she thought.

Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all she
was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple views
would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at such a
confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by herself.

"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with
soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen
to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all. Nobody
will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself. "So it is
plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to repent of, and
Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why isn't he here?"
Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some instinct told her
that though all this was true, and though nothing had happened, yet the
former purity of her love for Prince Andrew had perished. And again in
imagination she went over her whole conversation with Kuragin, and again
saw the face, gestures, and tender