"I do not know. I often think about it." "Often?" "Yes." "One would not say so, to look at you now: you have such a merry, bright face, you are smiling...." "Yes, I am very merry now,"--returned Liza ingenuously. Lavretzky felt like seizing both her hands, and clasping them tightly. "Liza, Liza!"--called Marya Dmitrievna,--"come hither, look! What a carp I have caught!" "Immediately, _maman_,"--replied Liza, and went to her, but Lavretzky remained on his willow-tree. "I talk with her as though I were not a man whose life is finished," he said to himself. As she departed, Liza had hung her hat on a bough; with a strange, almost tender sentiment, Lavretzky gazed at the hat, at its long, rather crumpled ribbons. Liza speedily returned to him, and again took up her stand on the raft. "Why do you think that Vladimir Nikolaitch has no heart?"--she inquired, a few moments later. "I have already told you, that I may be mistaken; however, time will show." Liza became thoughtful. Lavretzky began to talk about his manner of life at Vasilievskoe, about Mikhalevitch, about Anton; he felt impelled to talk to Liza, to communicate to her everything that occurred to his soul: she was so charming, she listened to him so attentively; her infrequent comments and replies seemed to him so simple and wise. He even told her so. Liza was amazed. "Really?"--she said;--"why, I have always thought that I, like my maid Nastya, had no words of my own. One day she said to her betrothed: 'Thou must find it tiresome with me; thou always sayest such fine things to me, but I have no words of my own.'" "And thank God for that!" thought Lavretzky. XXVII