“I’d be glad to sit beside you and rest: I’m tired; but you see how they keep asking me, and I’m glad of it, I’m happy and I love everybody, and you and I understand it all,” and much, much more was said in her smile. When her partner left her Natásha ran across the room to choose two ladies for the figure.
“If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she will be my wife,” said Prince Andréy to himself quite to his own surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.
“What rubbish sometimes enters one’s head!” thought Prince Andréy, “but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original, that she won’t be dancing here a month before she will be married. … Such as she are rare here,” he thought, as Natásha, readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself beside him.
When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up to the dancers. He invited Prince Andréy to come and see them, and asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natásha did not answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said reproachfully: “How can you ask such a question?”
“I have never enjoyed myself so much before!” she said, and Prince Andréy noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her father and instantly dropped again. Natásha was happier than she had ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.
At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and absentminded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.