"From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was appearing on his own horizon--from that day the problem of the vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question 'Why?' 'Wherefore?' which had come to him amid every occupation, was now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so transient and incomprehensible--but he remembered her as he had last seen her, and all his doubts vanished--not because she had answered the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty--a realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for." -- Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, book 9, chapter XIX
Tolstoy has yet again captured the essence of what it is that makes you so captivating and unforgettable. I don't know upon whom he based the character of Natasha, but if I believed in reincarnation I would swear it was you in a previous life. I suppose that I'm being vain to think that you are the only woman to have ever had this quality of transcendent luminosity. I learned recently that Audrey Hepburn played her in the movie, which is about as perfect a casting as I've ever seen.
This time, though, it is a different man who is in love with her. The character, in fact, in whom I find the most of myself: Pierre, who is large, introverted, generally misjudged and misunderstood, but profoundly kind-hearted and generous. I strongly suspect that it is he who comes to the realization, at the end of the book, which is found in the quotation in my byline to the right on this blog.
"That grateful look" which is fixed in Pierre's mind corresponds exactly to the look you gave me as you walked off the front porch, leaving the party that day--the last day that we were friends. It is fixed forever in my mind and my heart.