than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass. She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his own will.
“Well, I will leave you in your little corner,” came Anna Pávlovna’s voice, “I see you are all right there.”
And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.
A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pávlovna said to him: “I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?”
This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg house