to adapt what is told them to their own ideas and to bring out in haste the clever comments elaborated in their little mental factory. This rare happiness is given only by those real women, gifted with a faculty for picking out and assimilating all that is best in what a man shows them. Natasha, though herself unconscious of it, was all rapt attention; she did not lost one word, one quaver of the voice, one glance, one twitching in the facial muscles, one gesture of Pierre’s. She caught the word before it was uttered and bore it straight to her open heart, divining the secret import of all Pierre’s spiritual travail.

Princess Marya understood his story and sympathised with him, but she was seeing now something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre. And this idea, which struck her now for the first time, filled her heart with gladness.

It was three o’clock in the night. The footmen, with melancholy and severe faces, came in with fresh candles, but no one noticed them.

Pierre finished his story. With shining, eager eyes Natasha still gazed intently and persistently at him, as though she longed to understand something more, that perhaps he had left unsaid. In shamefaced and happy confusion, Pierre glanced at her now and then, and was thinking what to say now to change the subject. Princess Marya was mute. It did not strike any of them that it was three o’clock in the night, and time to be in bed.

“They say: sufferings are misfortunes,” said Pierre. “But if at once, this minute, I was asked, would I remain what I was before I was taken prisoner, or go through it all again, I should say, for God’s sake let me rather be a prisoner and eat horseflesh again. We imagine that as soon as we are torn out of our habitual path all is over, but it is only the beginning of something new and good. As long as there is life, there is happiness. There is a great deal, a great deal before us. That I say to you,” he said, turning to Natasha.

“Yes, yes,” she said, answering something altogether different, “and I too would ask for nothing better than to go through it all again.”

Pierre looked intently at her.

“Yes, and nothing more,” Natasha declared.

“Not true, not true,” cried Pierre. “I am not to blame for being alive and wanting to live; and you the same.”

All at once Natasha let her head drop into her hands, and burst into tears.

“What is it, Natasha?” said Princess Marya.

“Nothing, nothing.” She smiled through her tears to Pierre. “Good-night, it’s bedtime.”

Pierre got up, and took leave.

Natasha, as she always did, went with Princess Marya into her bedroom. They talked of what Pierre had told them. Princess Marya did not give her opinion of Pierre. Natasha, too, did not talk of him.

“Well, good-night, Marie,” said Natasha. “Do you know I am often afraid that we don’t talk of him” (she meant Prince Andrey), “as though we were afraid of desecrating our feelings, and so we forget him.”

Princess Marya sighed heavily, and by this sigh acknowledged the justice of Natasha’s words; but she did not in words agree with her.

“Is it possible to forget?” she said.