Princess Maria postponed her departure, Sonya, the count tried to replace Natasha, but could not. They saw that she alone could keep her mother from despairing. For three weeks Natasha lived with her mother, slept in a chair in her room, sang, fed her, and kept talking to her," she said, "because one gentle, caressing voice calmed her down.
Her mother's soul wound could not heal. Petya's death ripped off half her life. One month after learning of Petya's death, who had caught her as a fresh and cheerful woman of fifty, she left her room as a half-dead old woman who did not take part in her life. But the same wound that half-killed the Countess, this new wound caused Natasha to come to life.
The soul wound from the rupture of the spiritual body, just as the physical wound seems to be, strange as it may seem, after the deep wound has healed and seems to have converged, the soul wound, like the physical wound, heals only from within by the protruding power of life.
Natasha's wound healed as well. She thought that her life was over. But suddenly her love for her mother showed her that the essence of her life - love - is still alive in her. Love woke up and life woke up.
The last days of Prince Andrei connected Natasha with Princess Mary. The new misfortune brought them even closer together. Princess Maria postponed her departure and for the last three weeks, as a sick child, she cared for Natasha. The last weeks spent in her mother's room had torn her physical strength apart.
One afternoon, Princess Maria noticed that Natasha was shivering in a feverish chill, took her to her and put her to bed. Natasha was lying down, but when Princess Maria, having lowered her headstops, wanted to leave, Natasha called her to her place.
- I don't want to sleep. Marie, sit with me.
- You are tired - try to sleep.
- No, no. Why did you take me away? She will ask.
- She is much better. She spoke so well these days," said Princess Maria.
Natasha was lying in bed and looking at Princess Maria's face in the half-black of the room.
"Does she look like him? - Natasha thought. - Yes, she did, and she did not. But she was special, strange, completely new, unknown. And she loves me. What's on her mind? All good things. But how? How does she think? How does she look at me? Yes, she is beautiful.
- Masha," she said, shyly drawing her hand to her. - Masha, don't think I'm bad. No? Masha, darling. How I love you. Let's be friends at all.
And Natasha, hugging you, started kissing Princess Maria's hands and face. Princess Maria was ashamed of herself and rejoiced at this expression of Natasha's feelings.
From that day onwards, the Princess Mary and Natasha established a passionate and gentle friendship, which happens only between women. They constantly kissed each other, spoke gentle words and spent most of their time together. If one came out, the other was restless and in a hurry to join her. The two of them felt more in agreement with each other than with each other. The feeling between them was stronger than friendship: it was an exceptional feeling of being able to live only in the presence of each other.
Sometimes they would keep silent for hours; sometimes, lying in bed, they would start talking and talking until morning. They talked more about the past. Princess Maria told about her childhood, about her mother, about her father, about her dreams; and Natasha, who had previously turned away from this life of devotion, obedience, from the poetry of Christian self-denial, now, feeling bound by love with Princess Mary, fell in love with Princess Mary and understood the previously incomprehensible side of life. She did not think to apply obedience and self-denial to her life, because she got used to looking for other joys, but she understood and fell in love with this previously incomprehensible virtue in another one. For Princess Maria, who listened to the stories about Natasha's childhood and first youth, also opened up the previously unknown side of life, the belief in life, in the pleasure of life.
They never talked about him in the same way so as not to break the height of feeling in them with words, as it seemed to them, and this silence about him did what little by little, not believing it, they forgot him.
Natasha lost weight, turned pale, and became so weak physically that everybody was talking about her health, and she enjoyed it. But sometimes she was suddenly exposed not only to the fear of death, but also to the fear of illness, weakness, loss of beauty, and unwittingly, she sometimes looked carefully at her naked hand, surprised at her thinness, or looked in the morning in the mirror at her stretched out, pathetic as it seemed to her, face. It seemed to her that this was the way it was supposed to be, and at the same time it became scary and sad.
Once, she soon went upstairs, and she had a hard time breathing. Immediately, she involuntarily came up with a case downstairs and ran back upstairs, trying her hand and watching herself.
Another time she called Dunyasha and her voice rattled. She clicked her again, even though she had heard her footsteps," she clicked with the breast voice she was singing, and listened to him.
She didn't know it, wouldn't believe it, but