in."

"Very well, let us begin," said Lisa.

The first adagio went fairly successfully though Panshin made more
than one false note. His own compositions and what he had practised
thoroughly he played very nicely, but he played at sight badly. So
the second part of the sonata--a rather quick allegro--broke down
completely; at the twentieth bar, Panshin, who was two bars behind, gave
in, and pushed his chair back with a laugh.

"No!" he cried, "I can't play to-day; it's a good thing Lemm did not
hear us; he would have had a fit."

Lisa got up, shut the piano, and turned round to Panshin.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"That's just like you, that question! You can never sit with your
hands idle. Well, if you like let us sketch, since it's not quite dark.
Perhaps the other muse, the muse of painting--what was her name? I
have forgotten... will be more propitious to me. Where's your album? I
remember, my landscape there is not finished."

Lisa went into the other room to fetch the album, and Panshin, left
alone, drew a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, and rubbed his
nails and looked as it were critically at his hands. He had beautiful
white hands; on the second finger of his left hand he wore a spiral gold
ring. Lisa came back; Panshin sat down at the window, and opened the
album.

"Ah!" he exclaimed: "I see that you have begun to copy my landscape--and
capitally too. Excellent! only just here--give me a pencil--the shadows
are not put in strongly enough. Look."

And Panshin with a flourish added a few long strokes. He was for ever
drawing the same landscape: in the foreground large disheveled trees,
a stretch of meadow in the background, and jagged mountains on the
horizon. Lisa looked over his shoulders at his work.

"In drawing, just as in life generally," observed Panshin, holding
his head to right and to left, "lightness and boldness--are the great
things."

At that instant Lemm came into the room, and with a stiff bow was about
to leave it; but Panshin, throwing aside album and pencils, placed
himself in his way.

"Where are you doing, dear Christopher Fedoritch? Aren't you going to
stay and have tea with us?"

"I go home," answered Lemm in a surly voice; "my head aches."

"Oh, what nonsense!--do stop. We'll have an argument about Shakespeare."

"My head aches," repeated the old man.

"We set to work on the sonata of Beethoven without you," continued
Panshin, taking hold of him aff