War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [370]
In one of the moments of awkward silence during which Anatole calmly and persistently stared at her with his prominent eyes, Natasha, to break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. Natasha asked it and blushed. She kept feeling that she was doing something indecent in speaking with him. Anatole smiled, as if encouraging her.
“In the beginning I didn’t like it much, because what is it that makes a city pleasant? Ce sont les jolies femmes,*376 isn’t that so? Well, but now I like it very much,” he said, looking at her meaningfully. “Will you come to this carousel, Countess? Please do come,” he said and, reaching his hand out to her bouquet and lowering his voice, he said: “Vous serez la plus jolie. Venez, chère comtesse, et comme gage donnez-moi cette fleur.”†377
Natasha did not understand what he said, nor did he himself, but she felt that there was some indecent purpose in his incomprehensible words. She did not know what to say, and she turned away as if she had not heard what he said. But as soon as she turned away, she thought that he was there behind her, so near to her.
“How is he now? Is he embarrassed? Angry? Should I set things right?” she asked herself. She could not help turning to look. She looked straight into his eyes, and his nearness, and his confidence, and the good-natured tenderness of his smile won her over. She also smiled at him, just as he did, looking straight into his eyes. And again she felt with horror that between him and her there was no barrier of any sort.
The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box calm and cheerful. Natasha returned to her father’s box, now totally subjected to the world she was in. Everything that was happening before her now seemed perfectly natural to her; but instead all her former thoughts about her fiancé, about Princess Marya, about country life, never once entered her head, as if it was all long ago, long past.
In the fourth act there was a devil, who sang, waving his arm, until the boards were pulled out from under him, and he sank down below. That was all Natasha saw of the fourth act: something excited and tormented her, and the cause of it was Kuragin, whom she involuntarily followed with her eyes. As they were leaving the theater, Anatole came up to them, hailed their carriage, and helped them in. Helping Natasha in, he pressed her arm above the wrist. Natasha, excited, red, and happy, glanced at him. He, flashing his eyes and smiling tenderly, was looking at her.
Only when she came home could Natasha clearly think through all that had happened to her, and suddenly, remembering Prince Andrei, she became horrified, and, in front of everyone, over the tea to which they all sat down after the theater, gasped loudly, turned red, and ran out of the room. “My God! I’m lost!” she said to herself. “How could I have allowed it?” she thought. For a long time she sat, covering her flushed face with her hands, trying to give herself a clear accounting of what had happened to her, and she could understand neither what had happened nor what she felt. Everything seemed dark, unclear, and frightening to her. There, in that huge, brightly lit hall, where Duport, with bare legs and a sparkling jacket, had leaped over the wet boards to the music, and girls, and old men, and the bare Hélène, with her calm and proud smile, had rapturously shouted bravo—there, in the shadow of this Hélène, everything had been clear and simple; but now, alone with herself, it was incomprehensible. “What on earth is it? What is this fear that I feel before him? What is this remorse that I feel now?” she wondered.
Only to the old countess, in bed at night, would Natasha have been able to