by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in her
eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.
Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again with a
strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And now, now
it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at the instant
when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing itself to her a
loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her ears. Dunyasha,
her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a frightened look
on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.

"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange, excited
look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she finished
with a sob.

CHAPTER II

Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling
a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of
them--her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar,
so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult to
the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not
merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard
Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not grasp
them.

"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live
their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.

As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of
her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He
had evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were
choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and
burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round face.

"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a child
and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost fell into
it, covering his face with his hands.

Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole being.
Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache as if
something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But the pain
was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the oppressive
constraint that had prevented her taking part in life. The sight of her
father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that she heard through the
door, made her immediately forget herself and her own grief.

She ran to her father, but he feebly waved hi