“Yes, it is over, auntie, if you will only try to help me,” Lisa declared with sudden animation, and she flung herself on Marfa Timofyevna’s neck.  “Dar auntie, be a friend to me, help me, don’t be angry, understand me” . . .

“Why, what is it, what is it, my good girl?  Don’t terrify me, please; I shall scream directly; don’t look at me like that; tell me quickly, what is it?”

“I—­I want,” Lisa hid her face on Marfa Timofyevna’s bosom, “I want to go into a convent,” she articulated faintly.

The old lady almost bounded off the bed.

“Cross yourself, my girl, Lisa, dear, think what you are saying; what are you thinking of?  God have mercy on you!” she stammered at last.  “Lie down, my darling, sleep a little, all this comes from sleeplessness, my dearie.”

Lisa raised her head, her cheeks were glowing.

“No, auntie,” she said, “don’t speak like that; I have made up my mind, I prayed, I asked counsel of God; all is at an end, my life with you is at an end.  Such a lesson was not for nothing; and it is not the first time that I have thought of it.  Happiness was not for me; even when I had hopes of happiness, my heart was always heavy.  I knew all my own sins and those of others, and how papa made our fortune; I know it all.  For all that there must be expiation.  I am sorry for you, sorry for mamma, for Lenotchka; but there is no help; I feel that there is no living here for me; I have taken leave of all, I have greeted everything in the house for the last time; something calls to me; I am sick at heart, I want to hide myself away for ever.  Do not hinder me, do not dissuade me, help me, or else I must go away alone.”

Marfa Timofyevna listened to her niece with horror.

“She is ill, she is raving,” she thought:  “we must send for a doctor; but for which one?  Gedeonovsky was praising one the other day; he always tells lies—­but perhaps this time he spoke the truth.”  But when she was convinced that Lisa was not ill, and was not raving, when she constantly made the same answer to all her expostulations, Marfa Timofyevna was alarmed and distressed in earnest.  “But you don’t know, my darling,” she began to reason with her, “what a life it is in those convents!  Why, they would feed you, my own, on green hemp oil, and they would put you in the coarsest linen, and make you go about in the cold; you will never be able to bear all that, Lisa, darling.  All this is Agafya’s doing; she led you astray.  But then you know she began by living and lived for her own pleasure; you must live, too.  At least, let me die in peace, and then do as you like.  And who has ever heard of such a thing, for the sake of such a—­for the sake of a goat’s beard, God forgive us!—­for the sake of a man—­to go into a convent!  Why, if you are so sick at heart, go on a pilgrimage, offer prayers to some saint, have a Te Deum sung, but don’t put the black hood on your head, my dear creature, my good girl.”