peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya’s face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his present Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sónya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in fairyland.
“Sónya, is it well with thee ?” he asked from time to time.
“Yes!” she replied. “And with thee ?”
When halfway home Nikoláy handed the reins to the coachman and ran for a moment to Natásha’s sleigh and stood on its wing.
“Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind about Sónya?”
“Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.
“Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows! … Natásha—are you glad?”
“I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has, Nicolas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while Sónya was not,” continued Natásha. “Now I am so glad! Well, run back to her.”
“No, wait a bit. … Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nikoláy, peering into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha, it’s magical, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she replied. “You have done splendidly.”
“Had I seen