As he was leaving the Kalitins' house, Lavretzky encountered Panshin; they saluted each other coldly. Lavretzky went home to his apartment, and locked himself in. He experienced a sensation such as he had, in all probability, never experienced before. Had he remained long in that state of "peaceful numbness"? had he long continued to feel, as he had expressed it, "at the bottom of the river"? What had altered his position? what had brought him out, to the surface? the most ordinary, inevitable though always unexpected of events;--death? Yes: but he did not think so much about the death of his wife, about his freedom, as,--what sort of answer would Liza give to Panshin? He was conscious that, in the course of the last three days, he had come to look upon her with different eyes; he recalled how, on returning home, and thinking about her in the silence of the night, he had said to himself: "If...." That "if," wherein he had alluded to the past, to the impossible, had come to pass, although not in the way he had anticipated,--but this was little in itself. "She will obey her mother," he thought, "she will marry Panshin; but even if she refuses him,--is it not all the same to me?" As he passed in front of the mirror, he cast a cursory glance at his face, and shrugged his shoulders. The day sped swiftly by in these reflections; evening arrived. Lavretzky wended his way to the Kalitins. He walked briskly, but approached their house with lingering steps. In front of the steps stood Panshin's drozhky. "Come,"--thought Lavretzky,--"I will not be an egoist," and entered the house. Inside he met no one, and all was still in the drawing-room; he opened the door, and beheld Marya Dmitrievna, playing picquet with Panshin. Panshin bowed to him in silence, and the mistress of the house uttered a little scream:--"How unexpected!"--and frowned slightly. Lavretzky took a seat by her side, and began to look over her cards. "Do you know how to play picquet?"--she asked him, with a certain dissembled vexation, and immediately announced that she discarded. Panshin reckoned up ninety, and politely and calmly began to gather up the tricks, with a severe and dignified expression on his countenance. That is the way in which diplomats should play; probably, that is the way in which he was wont to play in Petersburg, with some powerful dignitary, whom he desired to impress with a favourable opinion as to his solidity and maturity. "One hundred and one, one hundred and two, hearts; one hundred and three,"--rang out his measured tone, and Lavretzky could not understand what note resounded in it: reproach or self-conceit. "Is Marfa Timofeevna to be seen?"--he asked, observing that Panshin, still with great dignity, was beginning to shuffle the cards. Not a trace of the artist was, as yet, to be observed in him. "Yes, I think so. She is in her own apartments, up-stairs,"--replied Marya Dmitrievna:--"you had better inquire."