lower, who said we were lower? … How do I know what I was before?” Natásha rejoined with conviction. “The soul is immortal—well then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a whole eternity.”
“Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity,” remarked Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.
“Why is it hard to imagine eternity?” said Natásha. “It is now today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday, and the day before. …”
“Natásha! Now it’s your turn. Sing me something,” they heard the countess say. “Why are you sitting there like conspirators?”
“Mamma, I don’t at all want to,” replied Natásha, but all the same she rose.
None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but Natásha got up and Nikoláy sat down at the clavichord.
Standing as usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the resonance was best, Natásha began to sing her mother’s favorite song.
She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The count, from his study where he was talking to Mítenka, heard her and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped, while Mítenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling. Nikoláy did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath