erything, everything that
I felt, and asked him to wait. Are you satisfied?"--she added, with a
swift smile,--and lightly touching the railing with her hand, she ran
down the stairs.

"What shall I play for you?"--she asked, as she raised the lid of the
piano.

"Whatever you like,"--replied Lavretzky, and seated himself in such a
position that he could watch her.

Liza began to play, and, for a long time, never took her eyes from her
fingers. At last, she glanced at Lavretzky, and stopped short: so
wonderful and strange did his face appear to her.

"What is the matter with you?"--she asked.

"Nothing,"--he replied:--"all is very well with me; I am glad for you, I
am glad to look at you,--go on."

"It seems to me,"--said Liza, a few moments later:--"that if he really
loved me, he would not have written that letter; he ought to have felt
that I could not answer him now."

"That is of no importance,"--said Lavretzky:--"the important point is,
that you do not love him."

"Stop,--what sort of a conversation is this! I keep having visions of
your dead wife, and you are terrible to me!"

"My Lizeta plays charmingly, does she not, Valdemar?"--Marya
Dmitrievna was saying to Panshin at the same moment.

"Yes,"--replied Panshin;--"very charmingly."

Marya Dmitrievna gazed tenderly at her young partner; but the latter
assumed a still more important and careworn aspect, and announced
fourteen kings.

XXXI

Lavretzky was not a young man; he could not long deceive himself as to
the sentiments with which Liza had inspired him; he became definitively
convinced, on that day, that he had fallen in love with her. This
conviction brought no great joy to him. "Is it possible," he thought,
"that at the age of five and thirty I have nothing better to do than to
put my soul again into the hands of a woman? But Liza is not like _that
one_; she would not require from me shameful sacrifices; she would not
draw me away from my occupations; she herself would encourage me to
honourable, severe toil, and we would advance together toward a fine
goal. Yes," he wound up his meditations:--"all that is good, but the bad
thing is, that she will not in the least wish to marry me. It was not for
nothing that she told me, that I am terrible to her. On the other hand,
she does not love that Panshin either.... A poor consolation!"

Lavretzky rode out to Vasilievskoe; but he did not remain four
days,--i