She shuddered again, just as if something had stung her, then she raised her eyes to heaven.

“That is entirely in the hands of God,” she replied.

“But you love me, Liza?  We are going to be happy?”

She let fall her eyes.  He softly drew her to himself, and her head sank upon his shoulder.  He bent his head a little aside, and kissed her pale lips.

* * * * *

Half an hour later Lavretsky was again standing before the garden gate.  He found it closed now and was obliged to get over the fence.  He returned into the town, and walked along its sleeping streets.  His heart was full of happiness, intense and unexpected; all misgiving was dead within him.  “Disappear, dark spirit of the Past!” he said to himself.  “She loves me.  She will be mine.”

Suddenly he seemed to hear strange triumphal sounds floating in the air above his head.  He stopped.  With greater grandeur than before the sounds went clanging forth.  With strong, sonorous stream did they flow along—­and in them, as it seemed to him, all his happiness spoke and sang.  He looked round.  The sounds came from the two upper windows of a small house.

“Lemm!” he exclaimed, and ran up to the door of the house.  “Lemm, Lemm!” he repeated loudly.

The sounds died away, and the form of the old man, wrapped in a dressing-gown, with exposed chest and wildly floating hair, appeared at the window.

“Ha! it is you,” he said, with an air of importance.

“Christopher Fedorovich, what wonderful music!  For heaven’s sake let me in!”

The old man did not say a word, but with a dignified motion of the hand he threw the key of the door out of the window into the street.  Lavretsky hastily ran up-stairs, entered the room, and was going to fling himself into Lemm’s arms.  But Lemm, with a gesture of command, pointed to a chair, and said sharply in his incorrect Russian, “Sit down and listen,” then took his seat at the piano, looked round with a proud and severe glance, and began to play.

Lavretsky had heard nothing like it for a long time indeed.  A sweet, passionate melody spoke to the heart with its very first notes.  It seemed all thoroughly replete with sparkling light, fraught with inspiration, with beauty, and with joy.  As it rose and sank it seemed to speak of all that is dear, and secret, and holy, on earth.  It spoke too of a sorrow that can never end, and then it went to die away in the distant heaven.

Lavretsky had risen from his seat and remained standing, rooted to the spot, and pale with rapture.  Those sounds entered very readily into his heart; for it had just been stirred into sensitiveness by the touch of a happy love, and they themselves were glowing with love.

“Play it again,” he whispered, as soon as the last final chord had died away.

The old man looked at him with an eagle’s glance, and said slowly, in his native tongue, striking his breast with his hand, “It is I who wrote that, for I am a great musician,” and then he played once more his wonderful composition.