was not there and life was going on as before.
“Ah, here she is!” said the old count, when he saw Natásha enter. “Well, sit down by me.” But Natásha stayed by her mother and glanced round as if looking for something.
“Mamma!” she muttered, “give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly, quickly!” and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.
She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between the elders and Nikoláy, who had also come to the table.
“My God, my God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing in the same way!”
thought Natásha, feeling with horror a sense of repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they were always the same.
After tea, Nikoláy, Sónya, and Natásha went to the sitting room, to their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.
X
“Does it ever happen to you,” said Natásha to her brother, when they settled down in the sitting room, “does it ever happen to you to feel as if there were nothing more to come—nothing; that everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?”
“I should think so!” he replied. “I have felt like that when everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where there was music … and suddenly I felt so depressed …”
“Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!” Natásha interrupted him. > “When I was quite little that used