Márya’s hand to herself, “Másha, you mustn’t think me wicked. No? Másha darling, how I love you! Let us be quite, quite friends.”
And Natásha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making Princess Márya feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her feelings.
From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only between women was established between Princess Márya and Natásha. They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one another and spent most of their time together.
When one went out the other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself when alone.
A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them; an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other’s presence.
Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They spoke most of what was long past. Princess Márya spoke of her childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and Natásha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess Márya by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess Márya, listening to Natásha’s tales of childhood and early youth, there also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended