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300 “Sónya!” “Nicholas!” was all they said. They ran to the barn and then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back porch.

CHAPTER XII

from Pelagéya Danílovna's, Natásha, who always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sónya with Nicholas and the maids.

On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sónya's face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former and his present Sónya from whom he had resolved never to be parted again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new Sónya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling sky, felt himself again in fairyland.

“Sónya, is it well with thee?” he asked from time to time.

“Yes!” she replied. “And with thee?”

When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and ran for a moment to Natásha's sleigh and stood on its wing.

“Natásha!” he whispered in French, “do you know I have made up my mind about Sónya?”

“Have you told her?” asked Natásha, suddenly beaming all over with joy.

“Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows! Natásha—are you glad?”

“I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be happy while Sónya was not,” continued Natásha. “Now I am so glad! Well, run back to her.”

“No, wait a bit Oh, how funny you look!” cried Nicholas, peering into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual, and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before. “Natásha, it's magical, isn't it?”

“Yes,”she replied. “You have done splendidly.”

“Had I seen her before as she is now,” thought Nicholas, “I should long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me, and all would have been well.”

“So you are glad and I have done right?”

“Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it. Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing! I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of Sónya, for there is nothing but good in her.”

“Then it's all right?” said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting there, and that Circassian was Sónya, and that Sónya was certainly his future happy and loving wife.

When they reached home and had told their mother how they had spent the evening at the Melyukóvs', the girls went to their bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They talked of how they would live when they were married, how their husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natásha's table stood two looking glasses which Dunyásha had prepared beforehand.

“Only when will all that be? I am afraid never It would be too good!” said Natásha, rising and going to the looking glasses.

“Sit down, Natásha; perhaps you'll see him,” said Sónya.

Natásha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking glasses, and sat down.

“I see someone with a mustache,” said Natásha, seeing her own face.

“You mustn't laugh, Miss,” said Dunyásha.

With Sónya's help and the maid's, Natásha got the glass she held into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting (from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew, in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin, she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the looking glasses.

“Why is it others see things and I don't?” she said. “You sit down now, Sónya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me Today I feel so frightened!”

Sónya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began looking.