her where they were going to spend the summer, and then how he had asked her about Borís.
“But such a … such a … never happened to me before!” she said. “Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I’m with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it’s the real thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?”
“No, my love; I am frightened myself,” answered her mother. “Now go!”
“All the same I shan’t sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy! Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before,” she said, surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. “And could we ever have thought! …”
It seemed to Natásha that even at the time she first saw Prince Andréy at Otrádnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.
“And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this! Already then , directly I saw him I felt something peculiar.”
“What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them …” said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince Andréy had written in Natásha’s album.
“Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?”
“Don’t, Natásha! Pray to God. ‘Marriages are made in heaven,’ ” said her mother.
“Darling Mummy, how I love you!