No betrothal ceremony takes place and Natásha's engagement to Bolkónski is not announced; Prince Andrew insists on that. He says that as he is responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole burden of it; that he has given his word and bound himself forever, but that he does not wish to bind Natásha and gives her perfect freedom. If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natásha nor her parents wish to hear of this, but Andrew is firm. He comes every day to the Rostóvs', but does not behave to Natásha as an affianced lover: he does not use the familiar thou, but says you to her, and kisses only her hand. After their engagement, quite different, intimate, and natural relations spring up between them. It is as if they had not known each other till now. Both like to recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were nothing to one another; they feel themselves now quite different beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere.
At first the family feel some constraint in intercourse with him; he seems a man from another world, and for a long time Natásha trains the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to be. After a few days they grow accustomed to him, and without restraint in his presence pursue their usual way of life, in which he takes his part. He can talk about rural economy with the count, fashions with the countess and Natásha, and about albums and fancywork with Sónya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his presence express their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the evident omens there had been of it: Andrew's coming to Otrádnoe and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natásha and Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents betokening that it had to be. In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reign which always accompany the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting together everyone keeps silent. Sometimes the others get up and go away and the couple, left alone, still remain silent. They rarely speak of their future life. Andrew is afraid and ashamed to speak of it. Natásha shares this as she does all his feelings, which she constantly divines. Once she begins questioning him about his son. Andrew blushes, as he often does now, Natásha particularly likes it in him, and says that his son would not live with them. Why not, she asks in a frightened tone.
On the eve of departure Andrew brings Pierre and asks Natásha to turn only to him in trouble. Flushed and agitated she goes about the house all that day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not understanding what awaited her. She does not even cry when, on taking leave, he kisses her hand for the last time. Don't go, she says in a tone that makes him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and which he remembers long afterwards. Nor does she cry when he is gone; but for several days she sits in her room dry-eyed, taking no interest in anything and only saying now and then, Oh, why did he go away? But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around her, she recovers from her mental sickness just as suddenly and becomes her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy, as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of face.
