“I must⁠ ⁠… I must have a talk with you,” said Prince Andréy. “You know that pair of women’s gloves?” (He referred to the Masonic gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he loved.) “I⁠ ⁠… but no, I will talk to you later on,” and with a strange light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andréy approached Natásha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince Andréy asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.

But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on the affairs in Spain.