shrugged his shoulders.

The day passed quickly by in these meditations; and evening came. Lavretsky went to the Kalitins’. He walked quickly, but his pace slackened as he drew near the house. Before the steps was standing Panshin’s light carriage. «Come,» though Lavretsky, «I will not be an egoist»—and he went into the house. He met with no one within-doors, and there was no sound in the drawing-room; he opened the door and saw Marya Dmitrievna playing picquet with Panshin. Panshin bowed to him without speaking, but the lady of the house cried, «Well, this is unexpected!» and slightly frowned. Lavretsky sat down near her, and began to look at her cards.

«Do you know how to play picquet?» she asked him with a kind of hidden vexation, and then declared that she had thrown away a wrong card.

Panshin counted ninety, and began calmly and urbanely taking tricks with a severe and dignified expression of face. So it befits diplomatists to play; this was no doubt how he played in Petersburg with some influential dignitary, whom he wished to impress with a favourable opinion of his solidity and maturity. «A hundred and one, a hundred and two, hearts, a hundred and three,» sounded his voice in measured tones, and Lavretsky could not decide whether it had a ring of reproach or of self-satisfaction.

«Can I see Marfa Timofyevna?» he inquired, observing that Panshin was setting to work to shuffle the cards with still more dignity. There was not a trace of the artist to be detected in him now.

«I think you can. She is at home, up-stairs,» replied Marya Dmitrievna; «inquire for her.»

Lavretsky went up-stairs. He found Marfa Timofyevna also at cards; she was playing old maid with Nastasya Karpovna. Roska barked at him; but both the old ladies welcomed him cordially. Marfa Timofyevna especially seemed in excellent spirits.

«Ah! Fedya!» she began, «pray sit down, my dear. We are just finishing our game. Would you like some preserve? Shurotchka, bring him a pot of strawberry. You don’t want any? Well, sit there; only you mustn’t smoke; I can’t bear your tobacco, and it makes Matross sneeze.»

Lavretsky made haste to assure her that he had not the least desire to smoke.

«Have you been down-stairs?» the old lady continued. «Whom did you see there? Is Panshin still on view? Did you see Lisa? No? She was meaning to come up here. And here she is: speak of angels—»

Lisa came into the room, and she flushed when she saw Lavretsky.

«I came in for a minute, Marfa Timofyevna,» she was beginning.

«Why for a minute?» interposed the old lady. «Why are you always in such a hurry, you young people? You see I have a visitor; talk to him a little, and entertain him.»

Lisa sat down on the edge of a chair; she raised her eyes to Lavretsky—and felt that it was impossible not to let him know how her interview with Panshin had ended. But how was she to do it? She felt both awkward and ashamed. She had not long known him, this man who rarely went to church, and took his wife’s death so calmly—and here was she, confiding al her secrets to him…. It was true he took an interest in her; she herself trusted him and felt drawn to him; but all the same, she was ashamed, as though a stranger had been into her pure, maiden bower.

Marfa Timofyevna came to her assistance.

«Well, if you won’t entertain him,» said Marfa Timofyevna, «who will, poor fellow? I am too old for him, he is too clever for me, and for Nastasya Karpovna he’s too old, it’s only the quite young men she will look at.»

«How can I entertain Fedor Ivanitch?» said Lisa. «If he likes, had I not better play him something on the piano?» she added irresolutely.

«Capital; you’re my clever girl,» rejoined Marfa Timofyevna. «Step down-stairs, my dears; when you have finished, come back: I have been made old maid, I don’t like it, I want to have my revenge.»

Lisa got up. Lavretsky went after her. As she went down the staircase, Lisa stopped.

«They say truly,» she began, «that people’s hearts are full of contradictions. Your example ought to frighten me, to make me distrust marriage for love; but I—»

«You have refused him?» interrupted Lavretsky.

«No; but I have not consented either. I told him everything, everything I felt, and asked him to wait a little. Are you pleased with me?» she added with a swift smile—and with a light touch of her hand on the banister she ran down the stairs.

«What shall I play to you?» she asked, opening the piano.

«What you like,» answered Lavretsky as he sat down so that he could look at her.

Lisa began to play, and for a long while she did not lift her eyes from her fingers. She glanced at last at Lavretsky, and stopped short; his face seemed strange and beautiful to her.

«What is the matter with you?» she asked.

«Nothing,» he replied; «I’m very happy; I’m glad of you, I’m glad to see you—go on.»

«It seems to me,» said Lisa a few moments later, «that if he had really loved me, he would not have written that letter; he must have felt that I could not give him an answer now.»

«That is of no consequence,» observed Lavretsky, «what is important is that you don’t love him.»

«Stop, how can we talk like this? I keep thinking of you dead wife, and you frighten me.»

«Don’t you think, Voldemar, that Liseta plays charmingly?» Marya Dmitrievna was saying at that moment to Panshin.

«Yes,» answered Panshin, «very charmingly.»

Marya Dmitrievna looked tenderly at her young partner, but the latter assumed a still more important and care-worn air and called fourteen kings.

Chapter XXXI

Lavretsky was not a young man; he could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling inspired in him by Lisa; he was brought on that day to the final conviction that he loved her. This conviction did not give him ay great pleasure. «Have I really nothing better to do,» he thought, «at thirty-five than to put my soul into a woman’s keeping again? But Lisa is not like her; she would not demand degrading sacrifices from me: she would not tempt me away from my duties; she would herself incite me to hard honest work, and we would walk hand in hand towards a noble aim. Yes,» he concluded his reflections, «that’s all very fine, but the worst of it is that she does not in the least wish to walk hand in hand with me. She meant it when she said that I frightened her. But she doesn’t love Panshin either—a poor consolation!»

Lavretsky went back to Vassilyevskoe, but he could not get through four days there—so dull it seemed to him. He was also in agonies of suspense; the news announced by M. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters of any kind. He returned to the town and spent an evening at the Kalitins’. He could easily see that Marya Dmitrievna had to been set against him; but he succeeded in softening her a little, by losing fifteen roubles to her at picquet, and he spent nearly half an hour almost alone with Lisa in spite of the fact that her mother had advised her the previous evening not to be too intimate with a man qui a un si grand ridicule. He found a change in her; she had become, as it were, more thoughtful. She reproached him for his absence and asked him would he not go on the morrow to mass? (The next day was Sunday.)

«Do go,» she said before he had time to answer, «we will pray together fro the repose of her soul.» Then she added that she did not know how to act—she did not know whether she had the right to make Panshin wait any longer for her decision.

«Why so?» inquired Lavretsky.

«Because,» she said, «I begin now to suspect what that decision will be.»

She declared that her head ached and went to her own room up-stairs, hesitatingly holding out the tips of her fingers to Lavretsky.

The next day Lavretsky went to mass. Lisa was already in the church when he came in. She noticed him though she did not turn round towards him. She prayed fervently, her eyes were full of a calm light, calmly she bowed her head and lifted it again. He felt that she was praying for him too, and his heart was filled with a marvelous tenderness. He was happy and a little ashamed. The people reverently standing, the homely faces, the harmonious singing, the scent of incense, the long slanting gleams of light from the windows, the very darkness of the walls and arched roofs, all went to his heart. For long he had not been to church for long he had not turned to God: even now he uttered no words of prayer—he did not even pray without words—but, at least, for a moment in all his mind, if not in his body, he bowed down and meekly humbled himself to earth. He remembered how, in his childhood, he had always prayed in church until he had felt, as it were, a cool touch on his! brow; that, he used to think then, is the guardian angel receiving me, laying on me the seal of grace. He glanced at Lisa. «You brought me here,» he thought, «touch me, touch my soul.» She was still praying calmly; her face seemed him to him full of joy, and he was softened anew: he prayed for another soul, peace; for his own,