e the whole company rose and surrounded
Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.

"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had also
risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.

"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following Natasha.
He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him. "You are
enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never ceased..."

"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his
daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything
stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring
eyes.

After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and Countess
Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.

The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil her
improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked Natasha for a
valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand and told her she
was bewitching and that he loved her. During the ecossaise, which she
also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when they happened to be by
themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha lifted her frightened eyes
to him, but there was such confident tenderness in his affectionate look
and smile that she could not, whilst looking at him, say what she had to
say. She lowered her eyes.

"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another," she said
rapidly.... She glanced at him.

Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.

"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I
am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are
enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."

Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open
frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly
anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and the
Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to remain.
Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt his eyes
upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her father to let her
go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that Helene had followed
her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love, and that she again met
Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene had disappeared leaving them
alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and said in a tender voice:

"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never se