had always answered him either by a brief but appropriate remark—showing that it did not interest her—or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.
She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in the general smile that usually brightened her face.
Pierre knew that everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line, and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful step.
A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to himself: “What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have none?”
He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself and really possessed.
Pierre was one of those who are only strong when they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at Anna Pávlovna’s, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire paralyzed his will.
On Elèn’s name day, a small party of just their own people—as his wife said—met for supper at Prince Vasíli’s. All these friends and relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl would be decided that evening.
The visitors were seated at supper. Princess Kurágina, a portly imposing