began to strike some chords. Like all Russians of
good birth, he had studied music in his childhood, and like almost
all Russian gentlemen, he played very badly; but he loved music
passionately. Strictly speaking, he did not love the art, the forms in
which music is expressed (symphonies and sonatas, even operas wearied
him), but he loved the poetry of music: he loved those vague and sweet,
shapeless, and all-embracing emotions which are stirred in the soul by
the combinations and successions of sounds. For more than an hour,
he did not move from the piano, repeating many times the same chords,
awkwardly picking out new ones, pausing and melting over the minor
sevenths. His heart ached, and his eyes more than once filled with
tears. He was not ashamed of them; he let them flow in the darkness.
'Pavel was right,' he thought, 'I feel it; this evening will not come
again.' At last he got up, lighted a candle, put on his dressing-gown,
took down from the bookshelf the second volume of Raumer's _History of
the Hohenstaufen_, and sighing twice, he set to work diligently to read
it.

VI

Meanwhile, Elena had gone to her room, and sat down at the open window,
her head resting on her hands. To spend about a quarter of an hour every
evening at her bedroom window had become a habit with her. At this time
she held converse with herself, and passed in review the preceding day.
She had not long reached her twentieth year. She was tall, and had a
pale and dark face, large grey eyes under arching brows, covered with
tiny freckles, a perfectly regular forehead and nose, tightly compressed
lips, and a rather sharp chin. Her hair, of a chestnut shade, fell low
on her slender neck. In her whole personality, in the expression of her
face, intent and a little timorous, in her clear but changing glance, in
her smile, which was, as it were, intense, in her soft and uneven voice,
there was something nervous, electric, something impulsive and hurried,
something, in fact, which could never be attractive to every one, which
even repelled some.

Her hands were slender and rosy, with long fingers; her feet were
slender; she walked swiftly, almost impetuously, her figure bent a
little forward. She had grown up very strangely; first she idolised
her father, then she became passionately devoted to her mother, and had
grown cold to both of them, especially to her father. Of late years she
had behaved to her mother as to a sick grandmother; w