"Akh, do not utter such dreadful words,"--Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him:--"spare me, if only ... if only for the sake of that angel...." And, as she said these words, Varvara Pavlovna flew headlong into the next room, and immediately returned with a tiny, very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms. Heavy, ruddy-gold curls fell over her pretty, rosy little face, over her large, black, sleepy eyes; she smiled, and blinked at the light, and clung with her chubby hand to her mother's neck. "_Ada, vois, c'est ton pere_,"--said Varvara Pavlovna, pushing the curls aside from her eyes, and giving her a hearty kiss:--"_prie le avec moi_." "_C'est ca, papa?_"--lisped the little girl, brokenly. "_Oui, mon enfant, n'est ce pas, que tu l'aimes?_" But this was too much for Lavretzky. "In what melodrama is it that there is precisely such a scene?"--he muttered, and left the room. Varvara Pavlovna stood for a while rooted to the spot, slightly shrugged her shoulders, carried the little girl into the other room, undressed her, and put her to bed. Then she got a book, sat down near the lamp, waited for about an hour, and, at last, lay down on the bed herself. "_Eh bien, madame?_"--inquired her maid, a Frenchwoman, whom she had brought from Paris, as she removed her corsets. "_Eh bien, Justine_,"--she replied;--"he has aged greatly, but it strikes me that he is as good-natured as ever.--Give me my gloves for the night, prepare my high-necked grey gown for to-morrow; and do not forget the mutton chops for Ada.... Really, it will be difficult to obtain them here; but we must make the effort." "_A la guerre, comme a la guerre_,"--responded Justine, and put out the light. XXXVII For more than two hours Lavretzky roamed about the streets of the town. The night which he had spent in the suburbs of Paris recurred to his mind. His heart swelled to bursting within him, and in his head, which was empty, and, as it were, stunned, the same set of thoughts kept swirling,--dark, wrathful, evil thoughts. "She is alive, she is here," he whispered, with constantly augmenting amazement. He felt that he had lost Liza. Bile choked him; this blow had struck him too suddenly. How could he so lightly have believed the absurd gossip of a feuilleton, a scrap of paper? "Well, and if I had not believed it, what difference would that have made? I should not have known that Liza loves me; she herself would not have known it." He could not banish from himself the form, the voice, the glances of his wife ... and he cursed himself, cursed everything in the world.