Pierre was perfectly sincere in giving an affirmative answer to her question about Ellen’s perfection of manner. If ever he thought of Ellen, it was either of her beauty that he thought, or of her extraordinary capacity for serene, dignified silence in society.

The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but appeared anxious to conceal her adoration of Ellen, and rather to show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She glanced at her niece, as though to inquire what she was to do with them. Anna Pavlovna again laid a finger on Pierre’s sleeve and said: “I hope you will never say in future that people are bored at my house,” and glanced at Ellen. Ellen smiled with an air, which seemed to say that she did not admit the possibility of any one’s seeing her without being enchanted. The old aunt coughed, swallowed the phlegm, and said in French that she was very glad to see Ellen; then she addressed Pierre with the same greeting and the same grimace. In the middle of a halting and tedious conversation, Ellen looked round at Pierre and smiled at him with the bright, beautiful smile with which she smiled at every one. Pierre was so used to this smile, it meant so little to him, that he did not even notice it. The aunt was speaking at that moment of a collection of snuff-boxes belonging to Pierre’s father, Count Bezuhov, and she showed them her snuff-box. Princess Ellen asked to look at the portrait of the aunt’s husband, which was on the snuff-box.

“It’s probably the work of Vines,” said Pierre, mentioning a celebrated miniature painter. He bent over the table to take the snuff-box, listening all the while to the conversation going on in the larger group. He got up to move towards it, but the aunt handed him the snuff-box, passing it across Ellen, behind her back. Ellen bent forward to make room, and looked round smiling. She was, as always in the evening, wearing a dress cut in the fashion of the day, very low in the neck both in front and behind. Her bust, which had always to Pierre looked like marble, was so close to his short-sighted eyes that he could discern all the living charm of her neck and shoulders, and so near his lips that he need scarcely have stooped to kiss it. He felt the warmth of her body, the fragrance of scent, and heard the creaking of her corset as she moved. He saw not her marble beauty making up one whole with her gown; he saw and felt all the charm of her body, which was only veiled by her clothes. And having once seen this, he could not see it otherwise, just as we cannot return to an illusion that has been explained.

“So you have never noticed till now that I am lovely?” Ellen seemed to be saying. “You haven’t noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman, who might belong to any one—to you, too,” her eyes said. And at that moment Pierre felt that Ellen not only could, but would become his wife, that it must be so.

He knew it at that moment as surely as he would have known it, standing under the wedding crown beside her. How would it be? and when? He knew not, knew not even if it would be a good thing (he had a feeling, indeed, that for some reason it would not), but he knew it would be so.

Pierre dropped his eyes, raised them again, and tried once more to see her as a distant beauty, far removed from him, as he had seen her every day before. But he could not do this. He could not, just as a man who has been staring in a fog at a blade of tall steppe grass and taking it for a tree cannot see a tree in it again, after he has once recognised it as a blade of grass. She was terribly close to him. Already she had power over him. And between him and her there existed no barriers of any kind, but the barrier of his own will.

“Very good, I will leave you in your little corner. I see you are very comfortable there,” said Anna Pavlovna’s voice. And Pierre, trying panic-stricken to think whether he had done anything reprehensible, looked about him, crimsoning. It seemed to him as though every one knew, as well as he did, what was passing in him. A little later, when he went up to the bigger group, Anna Pavlovna said to him:

“I am told you are making improvements in your Petersburg house.” (This was the fact: the architect had told him it was necessary, and Pierre, without knowing with what object, was having his immense house in Petersburg redecorated.) “That is all very well, but do not move from Prince Vassily’s. It is a good thing to have such a friend as the prince,” she said, smiling to Prince Vassily. “I know something about that. Don’t I? And you are so young. You need advice. You mustn’t be angry with me for making use of