a mysterious air and kept silent, looking severely away.

"I fancy though it's struck eleven," remarked Marya Dmitrievna.

Her guests took the hint and began to say good-bye. Varvara Pavlovna
had to promise that she would come to dinner the following day and bring
Ada. Gedeonovsky, who had all but fallen asleep sitting in his corner,
offered to escort her home. Panshin took leave solemnly of all, but at
the steps as he put Varvara Pavlovna into her carriage he pressed her
hand, and cried after her, "au revoir!" Gedeonovsky sat beside her all
the way home. She amused herself by pressing the tip of her little foot
as though accidentally on his foot; he was thrown into confusion and
began paying her compliments. She tittered and made eyes at him when the
light of a street lamp fell into the carriage. The waltz she had played
was ringing in her head, and exciting her; whatever position she might
find herself in, she had only to imagine lights, a ballroom, rapid
whirling to the strains of music--and her blood was on fire, her eyes
glittered strangely, a smile strayed about her lips, and something of
bacchanalian grace was visible over her whole frame. When she reached
home Varvara Pavlovna bounded lightly out of the carriage--only real
lionesses know how to bound like that--and turning round to Gedeonovsky
she burst suddenly into a ringing laugh right in his face.

"An attractive person," thought the counsellor of state as he made his
way to his lodgings, where his servant was awaiting him with a glass of
opodeldoc: "It's well I'm a steady fellow--only, what was she laughing
at?"

Marfa Timofyevna spent the whole night sitting beside Lisa's bed.

Chapter XLI

Lavretsky spent a day and a half at Vassilyevskoe, and employed almost
all the time in wandering about the neighbourhood. He could not stop
long in one place: he was devoured by anguish; he was torn unceasingly
by impotent violent impulses. He remembered the feeling which had
taken possession of him the day after his arrival in the country; he
remembered his plans then and was intensely exasperated with himself.
What had been able to tear him away from what he recognised as his
duty--as the one task set before him in the future? The thirst for
happiness--again the same thirst for happiness.

"It seems Mihalevitch was right," he thought; "you wanted a second time
to taste happiness in life," he said to himself, "you forgot that it is
a luxury, an undeserve