Emma Watson Pussy
Books:
Anna Karenina
War And Peace
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he
come?..."
She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew
how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how
upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the
count and the other guests.
CHAPTER VIII
That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya
Dmitrievna had taken a box.
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievnas kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she
came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and
looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very
pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those
searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,
and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how
I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister
matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those
eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not
think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for
the present. I cant bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"
and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.
"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so
long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came
in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, shes altogether
different. I cant!"
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words
of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside
her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in
love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into
the line of carriages, the Rostovs carriage drove up to the
theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,
holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped
by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and
the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the
first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
audible.
"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.
An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and
opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the
door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and
shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered
before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of
feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the
overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with
Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.
A sensation she had not experienced for a long time--that of
hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck--suddenly
affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole
crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.
The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count
Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted
general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natashas
engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in
the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who
was making one of the best matches in Russia.
Natashas looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the
country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly
pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and
beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her
black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her
delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the
box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in
time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, theres Alenina,"
said Sonya, "with her mother, isnt
War And Peace page 332 War And Peace page 334
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