‘‘Marie, hush, nonsense! You ought to be ashamed,’’ he said gaily.

‘‘It seems to me that you can’t care for me; that I am so ugly … at all times, and now in this …’’

‘‘Oh, how absurd you are! It’s not those who are handsome we love, but those we love who are handsome. It is only Malvinas and such heroines who are loved because they are beautiful. And do you suppose I love my wife? Oh no, I don’t love you, but only … I don’t know how to tell you. When you are away, and any misunderstanding like this comes between us, I feel as though I were lost, and can do nothing. Why, do I love my finger? I don’t love it, but only try cutting it off …’’

‘‘No, I don’t feel like that, but I understand. Then you are not angry with me?’’

‘‘I am awfully angry!’’ he said, smiling, and getting up, and smoothing his hair, he began pacing up and down the room.

‘‘Do you know, Marie, what I have been thinking?’’ he began, beginning at once now that peace was made between them, thinking aloud before his wife. He did not inquire whether she were disposed to listen; that did not matter to him. An idea occurred to him; and so it must to her, too. And he told her that he meant to persuade Pierre to stay with them till the spring.

Countess Marya listened to him, made some comments, and then in her turn began thinking her thoughts aloud. Her thoughts were of the children.

‘‘How one can see the woman in her already,’’ she said in French, pointing to little Natasha. ‘‘You reproach us women for being illogical. You see in her our logic. I say, papa is sleepy, and she says, no, he’s laughing. And she is right,’’ said Countess Marya, smiling blissfully.

‘‘Yes, yes,’’ said Nikolay, lifting up his little girl in his strong arm, raised her high in the air, sat her on his shoulder, holding her little feet, and began walking up and down with her. There was just the same look of thoughtless happiness on the faces of father and daughter.

‘‘But do you know, you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,’’ his wife whispered in French.

‘‘Yes, but what can I do? … I try not to show it …’’

At that moment there was heard from the hall and the vestibule the sound of the block of the door, and footsteps, as though some one had arrived.

‘‘Somebody has come.’’

‘‘I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and find out,’’ said Countess Marya, and she went out of the room.

While she was gone Nikolay allowed himself to gallop round the room with his little girl. Panting for breath, he quickly lowered the laughing child, and hugged her to his breast. His capers made him think of dancing; and looking at the childish, round, happy little face, he wondered what she would be like when he would be an old man, taking her out to dances, and he remembered how his father used to dance Daniel Cooper and the mazurka with his daughter.

‘‘It is he, it is he, Nikolay!’’ said Countess Marya, returning a few minutes later. ‘‘Now our Natasha is herself again. You should have seen her delight, and what a scolding he came in for at once for having out-stayed his time. Come, let us go; make haste; come along! You must part at last,’’ she said, smiling, as she looked at the little girl nestling up to her father. Nikolay went out, holding his daughter by the hand.

Countess Marya lingered behind.


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