feeling with regard to the
allurements of the passions, and to breathe the accents of
disillusionment and resignation.

Panshine replied to her, but she refused to agree with him. Strange
to say, however, at the very time when she was uttering words which
conveyed what was frequently a harsh judgment, the accents of those
very words were tender and caressing, and her eyes expressed--What
those charming eyes expressed it would be hard to say, but it was
something which had no harshness about it, rather a mysterious
sweetness. Panshine tried to make out their hidden meaning, tried to
make his own eyes eloquent, but he was conscious that he failed. He
acknowledged that Varvara Pavlovna, in her capacity as a real lioness
from abroad, stood on a higher level than he; and, therefore, he was
not altogether master of himself.

Varvara Pavlovna had a habit of every now and then just touching the
sleeve of the person with whom she was conversing. These light touches
greatly agitated Panshine. She had the faculty of easily becoming
intimate with any one. Before a couple of hours had passed, it seemed
to Panshine as if he had known her an age, and as if Liza--that very
Liza whom he had loved so much, and to whom he had proposed the
evening before--had vanished in a kind of fog.

Tea was brought; the conversation became even more free from restraint
than before. Madame Kalitine rang for the page, and told him to ask
Liza to come down if her headache was better. At the sound of Liza's
name, Panshine began to talk about self-sacrifice, and to discuss the
question as to which is the more capable of such sacrifice--man or
woman. Maria Dmitrievna immediately became excited, began to affirm
that the woman is the more capable, asserted that she could prove
the fact in a few words, got confused over them, and ended with a
sufficiently unfortunate comparison. Varvara Pavlovna took up a sheet
of music, and half-screening her face with it, bent over towards
Panshine, and said in a whisper, while she nibbled a biscuit, a quiet
smile playing about her lips and her eyes, "_Elle n'a pas invente la
poudre, la bonne dame_."

Panshine was somewhat astonished, and a little alarmed by Varvara's
audacity, but he did not detect the amount of contempt for himself
that lay hid in that unexpected sally, and--forgetting all Maria
Dmitrievna's kindness and her attachment towards him, forgetting the
dinners she had given him, the money she had lent him--h