Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace

BOOK SEVEN: 1810 - 11 9. CHAPTER IX (continued)

Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the same," thought Natasha.

"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.

"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of being wrong.

"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."

"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen! " and Natasha sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where were you going?" she asked.

"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."

"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And where's Nicholas?"

"Asleep, I think."

"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come and sing."

She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.

"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be! And, worst of all, I am growing old- that's the thing! There won't then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose, put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.