"What is the matter with you?"--she said, as she placed the teapot on the samovar. "Have you noticed it?" "You are not the same to-day as I have seen you heretofore." Lavretzky bent over the table. "I wanted,"--he began,--"to tell you a certain piece of news, but now it is not possible.--However, read what is marked with pencil in this feuilleton,"--he added, giving her the copy of the newspaper which he had brought with him.--"I beg that you will keep this secret; I will call on you to-morrow morning." Liza was surprised.... Panshin made his appearance on the threshold of the door: she put the newspaper in her pocket. "Have you read Obermann, Lizaveta Mikhailovna?"--Panshin asked her meditatively. Liza gave him a superficial answer, left the hall, and went up-stairs. Lavretzky returned to the drawing-room, and approached the card-table. Marfa Timofeevna, with her cap-ribbons untied, and red in the face, began to complain to him about her partner, Gedeonovsky, who, according to her, did not know how to lead. "Evidently,"--she said,--"playing cards is quite a different thing from inventing fibs." Her partner continued to blink and mop his face. Liza entered the drawing-room, and seated herself in a corner; Lavretzky looked at her, she looked at him,--and something like dread fell upon them both. He read surprise and a sort of secret reproach in her face. Long as he might to talk to her, he could not do it; to remain in the same room with her, a guest among strangers, was painful to him: he decided to go away. As he took leave of her, he managed to repeat that he would come on the morrow, and he added that he trusted in her friendship. "Come,"--she replied, with the same amazement on her face. Panshin brightened up after Lavretzky's departure; he began to give advice to Gedeonovsky, banteringly paid court to Mme. Byelenitzyn, and, at last, sang his romance. But he talked with Liza and gazed at her as before: significantly and rather sadly. And again, Lavretzky did not sleep all night long. He did not feel sad, he was not excited, he had grown altogether calm; but he could not sleep. He did not even recall the past; he simply gazed at his life: his heart beat strongly and evenly, the hours flew past, but he did not even think of sleeping. At times, only, did the thought come to the surface in his mind: "But that is not true, it is all nonsense,"--and he paused, lowered his head, and began again to gaze at his life. ----- [11] A combination of music-room, ball-room, play-room, also used for all sorts of purposes, in all well-to-do Russian houses.--Translator. XXIX