Lisa was greatly bewildered.  Panshin appeared in the doorway.  She put the newspaper in her pocket.

“Have you read Obermann, Lisaveta Mihalovna?” Panshin asked her pensively.

Lisa made him a reply in passing, and went out of the room and up-stairs.  Lavretsky went back to the drawing-room and drew near the card-table.  Marfa Timofyevna, flinging back the ribbons of her cap and flushing with annoyance, began to complain of her partner, Gedeonovsky, who in her words, could not play a bit.

“Car-playing, you see,” she said, “is not so easy as talking scandal.”

The latter continued to blink and wipe his face.  Lisa came into the drawing-room and sat down in a corner; Lavretsky looked at her, she looked at him, and both the felt the position insufferable.  He read perplexity and a kind of secret reproachfulness in her face.  He could not talk to her as he would have liked to do; to remain in the same room with her, a guest among other guests, was too painful; he decided to go away.  As he took leave of her, he managed to repeat that he would come to-morrow, and added that he trusted in her friendship.

“Come,” she answered with the same perplexity on her face.

Panshin brightened up at Lavretsky’s departure:  he began to give advice to Gedeonovsky, paid ironical attentions to Madame Byelenitsin, and at last sang his song.  But with Lisa he still spoke and looked as before, impressively and rather mournfully.

Again Lavretsky did not sleep all night.  He was not sad, he was not agitated, he was quite clam; but he could not sleep.  He did not even remember the past; he simply looked at his life; his heart beat slowly and evenly; the hours glided by; he did not even think of sleep.  Only at times the thought flashed through his brain:  “But it is not true, it is all nonsense,” and he stood still, bowed his head and again began to ponder on the life before him.

Chapter XXIX

Marya Dmitrievna did not give Lavretsky an over-cordial welcome when he made his appearance the following day.  “Upon my word, he’s always in and out,” she thought.  She did not much care for him, and Panshin, under whose influence she was, had been very artful and disparaging in his praises of him the evening before.  And as she did not regard him as a visitor, and did not consider it necessary to entertain a relation, almost one of the family, it came to pass that in less than half-an hour’s time he found himself walking in an avenue in the grounds with Lisa.  Lenotchka and Shurotchka were running about a few paces from them in the flower-garden.

Lisa was as calm as usual but more than usually pale.  She took out of her pocket and held out to Lavretsky the sheet of the newspaper folded up small.

“That is terrible!” she said.

Lavretsky made no reply.

“But perhaps it is not true, though,” added Lisa.