verses called “Enchantress,” which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:
Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre
What magic power is this recalls me still?
What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,
What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?
He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natásha.
“Splendid! Excellent!” exclaimed Natásha. “Another verse,” she said, without noticing Nicholas.
“Everything's still the same with them,” thought Nicholas, glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Véra and his mother with the old lady.
“Ah, and here's Nicholas!” cried Natásha, running up to him.
“Is Papa at home?” he asked.
“I am so glad you've come!” said Natásha, without answering him. “We are enjoying ourselves! Vasíli Dmítrich is staying a day longer for my sake! Did you know?”
“No, Papa is not back yet,” said Sónya.
“Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!” called the old countess from the drawing room.
Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to persuade Natásha to sing.
“All wight! All wight!” shouted Denísov. “It's no good making excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla—I entweat you!”
The countess glanced at her silent son.
“What is the matter?” she asked.
“Oh, nothing,” said he, as if weary of being continually asked the same question. “Will Papa be back soon?”
“I expect so.”
“Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it! Where am I to go?” thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing room where the clavichord stood.
Sónya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to Denísov's favorite barcarolle. Natásha was preparing to sing. Denísov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.
Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.
“Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's nothing to be happy about!” thought he.
Sónya struck the first chord of the prelude.
“My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my brain is the only thing left me—not singing!” his thoughts ran on. “Go away? But where to? It's all one—let them sing!”
He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denísov and the girls and avoiding their eyes.
“Nikólenka, what is the matter?” Sónya's eyes fixed on him seemed to ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.
Nicholas turned away from her. Natásha too, with her quick instinct, had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself as young people often do. “No, I am too happy now to spoil my enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow,” she felt, and she said to herself: “No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as I am.”
“Now, Sónya!” she said, going to the very middle of the room, where she considered the resonance was best.
Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as ballet dancers do, Natásha, rising energetically from her heels to her toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.
“Yes, that's me!” she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with which Denísov followed her.
“And what is she so pleased about?” thought Nicholas, looking at his sister. “Why isn't she dull and ashamed?”
Natásha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may produce at the same intervals and hold for the same time, but which leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill you and make you weep.
Natásha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing seriously, mainly because Denísov so delighted in her singing. She no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before; but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her said: “It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be trained.” Only they generally said this some time after she had finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect breathing and labored transitions,
