ange to me now, is it possible that it will one
day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to myself?... No, that's
impossible!..."

"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to
your return," she added in a whisper.

And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face which
accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of inexhaustible
memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for Pierre. "'I shall
look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes, how did she say it?
Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your return.' Oh, how happy I
am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!" said Pierre to himself.

CHAPTER XIX

There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled it
during his courtship of Helene.

He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the words
he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and, "Whatever made
me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now repeated in imagination
every word that he or Natasha had spoken and pictured every detail of
her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but
only to repeat it again and again. There was now not a shadow of doubt
in his mind as to whether what he had undertaken was right or wrong.
Only one terrible doubt sometimes crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all
a dream? Isn't Princess Mary mistaken? Am I not too conceited and
self-confident? I believe all this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell
her, and she will be sure to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be
deluding himself. Doesn't he know that he is a man, just a man, while
I...? I am something altogether different and higher.'"

That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now make any
plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable that if only
he could attain it, it would be the end of all things. Everything ended
with that.

A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself incapable,
possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone but for the
whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the possibility of
being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to be occupied with
one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it seemed to him that
other people were all as pleased as he was himself and merely tried to
hide that pleasure by pretending to be busy with other interests. In
every word and gesture he saw al