He is in a mood of some sadness, and feels, after all his experiences, old beyond his years; he drives to the Rostofs and perceives a number of young girls running among the trees. "In front of the others ... ran a very slender, indeed a strangely slender maiden, with dark hair and dark eyes, in a yellow chintz dress, with a white handkerchief round her head, the locks emerging from it in ringlets." It is Natasha, and, that same night, Prince Andrei hears her conversing with her cousin Sonya at the window above his own. "The night was cool and calmly beautiful. In front of the window was a row of clipped trees, dark on one side and silver-bright on the other.... Farther away, beyond the trees, was a roof glittering with dew; farther to the right a tall tree with wide-spreading branches, showed a brilliant white bole and limbs; and directly above it the moon, almost at her full, shone in the bright, nearly starless spring night. Prince Andrei leaned his elbows on the window-sill and fixed his eyes on that sky." He hears Sonya and Natasha sing a duet, he hears Sonya try to persuade her cousin to sleep and Natasha's protest: "Sonya! Sonya! How can you go to sleep? Just see how lovely it is! How lovely! Come wake up, {46} Sonya," she said again with, tears in her voice. "Come, now, such a lovely, lovely night was never seen!" Prince Andrei meets her again at a ball in St. Petersburg, where her childlike happiness brings a breath of pure air into the artificial atmosphere; Natasha is so completely unaffected that, in the very midst of affectations, she keeps her unspoilt romance. Prince Andrei proposes for her hand, but the Rostofs' family affairs are in confusion, and Prince Andrei's father insists on a year's delay; for that space of time he goes abroad. Prince Andrei does not find the time of delay unreasonably long, and cannot understand that Natasha should do so, but the girl suffers the dangers of her inexperience; Prince Andrei has roused her to a full consciousness of womanhood, and her sensuous and passionate nature cannot endure the blank of his absence; also, since she is extremely sensitive, she is grieved by the cold attitude his family persistently maintain. She meets Anatol Kuragin, a man exceedingly handsome but unscrupulous, who at once makes violent love to her; she writes a letter to Prince Andrei breaking off their engagement, and consents to elope with Kuragin, this plan being discovered and frustrated by her family. Natasha wakens from her brief madness, realises how badly she has behaved to her betrothed, and, in her remorse and shame, attempts suicide. Prince Andrei, returning, learns the whole story; he is stung to the quick in his haughty pride; his spiritual nature makes him totally unable to understand the temptation, and he cannot forgive.