“What is there to be afraid of?”

“I am afraid you will be ruined,” said Sonya resolutely, herself horrified at what she was saying.

Natasha’s face expressed anger again.

“Then I will be ruined, I will; I’ll hasten to my ruin. It’s not your business. It’s not you, but I, will suffer for it. Leave me alone, leave me alone. I hate you!”

“Natasha!” Sonya appealed to her in dismay.

“I hate you, I hate you! And you’re my enemy for ever!”

Natasha ran out of the room.

Natasha avoided Sonya and did not speak to her again. With the same expression of agitated wonder and guilt she wandered about the rooms, taking up first one occupation and then another, and throwing them aside again at once.

Hard as it was for Sonya, she kept watch over her friend and never let her out of her sight.

On the day before that fixed for the count’s return, Sonya noticed that Natasha sat all the morning at the drawing-room window, as though expecting something, and that she made a sign to an officer who passed by, whom Sonya took to be Anatole.

Sonya began watching her friend even more attentively, and she noticed that all dinner-time and in the evening Natasha was in a strange and unnatural state, unlike herself. She made irrelevant replies to questions asked her, began sentences and did not finish them, and laughed at everything.

After tea Sonya saw the maid timidly waiting for her to pass at Natasha’s door. She let her go in, and listening at the door, found out that another letter had been given her. And all at once it was clear to Sonya that Natasha had some dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha would not let her in.

“She is going to run away with him!” thought Sonya. “She is capable of anything. There was something particularly piteous and determined in her face to-day. She cried as she said good-bye to uncle,” Sonya remembered. “Yes, it’s certain, she’s going to run away with him; but what am I to do?” wondered Sonya, recalling now all the signs that so clearly betokened some dreadful resolution on Natasha’s part. “The count is not here. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin, demanding an explanation from him? But who is to make him answer? Write to Pierre, as Prince Andrey asked me to do in case of trouble? … But perhaps she really has refused Bolkonsky (she sent off a letter to Princess Marya yesterday). Uncle is not here.”

To tell Marya Dmitryevna, who had such faith in Natasha, seemed to Sonya a fearful step to take.

“But one way or another,” thought Sonya, standing in the dark corridor, “now or never the time has come for me to show that I am mindful of all the benefits I have received from their family and that I love Nikolay. No, if I have to go three nights together without sleep; I won’t leave this corridor, and I will prevent her passing by force, and not let disgrace come upon their family,” she thought.


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