“I recognized the princess at once,”

“I recognized the princess at once,” put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.

“And I had no idea!” … cried Princess Marya. “Ah, Andrey, I did not see you.”

Prince Andrey and his sister kissed each other’s hands, and he told her she was just as great a cry-baby as she always had been. Princess Marya turned to her brother, and through her tears, her great, luminous eyes, that were beautiful at that instant, rested with a loving, warm and gentle gaze on Prince Andrey’s face. The little princess talked incessantly. The short, downy upper lip was continually flying down to meet the rosy, lower lip when necessary, and parting again in a smile of gleaming teeth and eyes. The little princess described an incident that had occurred to them on Spasskoe hill, and might have been serious for her in her condition. And immediately after that she communicated the intelligence that she had left all her clothes in Petersburg, and God knew what she would have to go about in here, and that Andrey was quite changed, and that Kitty Odintsov had married an old man, and that a suitor had turned up for Princess Marya, “who was a suitor worth having,” but that they would talk about that later. Princess Marya was still gazing mutely at her brother, and her beautiful eyes were full of love and melancholy. It was clear that her thoughts were following a train of their own, apart from the chatter of her sister-in-law. In the middle of the latter’s description of the last fête-day at Petersburg, she addressed her brother.

“And is it quite settled that you are going to the war, Andrey?” she said, sighing. Liza sighed too.

“Yes, and to-morrow too,” answered her brother.

“He is deserting me here, and Heaven knows why, when he might have had promotion …” Princess Marya did not listen to the end, but following her own train of thought, she turned to her sister-in-law, letting her affectionate eyes rest on her waist.

“Is it really true?” she said.

The face of her sister-in-law changed. She sighed.

“Yes, it’s true,” she said. “Oh! It’s very dreadful …”

Liza’s lip drooped. She put her face close to her sister-in-law’s face, and again she unexpectedly began to cry.

“She needs rest,” said Prince Andrey, frowning. “Don’t you, Liza? Take her to your room, while I go to father. How is he—just the same?”

“The same, just the same; I don’t know what you will think,” Princess Marya answered joyfully.

“And the same hours, and the walks about the avenues, and the lathe?” asked Prince Andrey with a scarcely perceptible smile, showing that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he recognised his weaknesses.