BOOK EIGHT: 1811 - 12
8. CHAPTER VIII
That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya
Dmitrievna had taken a box.
Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya
Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she
came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and
looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very
pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.
"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but
differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply
embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those
searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,
and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes- how
I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister
matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those
eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not
think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for
the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"
and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.
"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so
long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came
in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether
different. I can't!"
Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not
enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at
once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words
of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside
her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps
flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in
love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into
the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the
theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,
holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped
by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and
the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the
first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already
audible.
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