This was too much even for Panshin:  he grew confused and changed the conversation.  He tried to turn it upon the beauty of the starlit sky, the music of Schubert; nothing was successful.  He ended by proposing to Marya Dmitrievna a game of picquet.  “What! on such an evening?” she replied feebly.  She ordered the cards to be brought in, however.  Panshin tore open a new pack of cards with a loud crash, and Lisa and Lavretsky both got up as if by agreement, and went and placed themselves near Marfa Timofyevna.  They both felt all at once so happy that they were even a little afraid of remaining alone together, and at the same time they both felt that the embarrassment they had been conscious of for the last few days had vanished, and would return no more.  The old lady stealthily patted Lavretsky on the cheek, slyly screwed up her eyes, and shook her head once or twice, adding in a whisper, “You have shut up our clever friend, many thanks.”  Everything was hushed in the room; the only sound was the faint crackling of the wax-candles, and sometimes the tap of a hand on the table, and an exclamation or reckoning of points; and the rich torrent of the nightingale’s song, powerful piercingly sweet, poured in at the window, together with the dewy freshness of the night.

Chapter XXXIV

Lisa had not uttered a word in the course of the dispute between Lavretsky and Panshin, but she had followed it attentively and was completely on Lavretsky’s side.  Politics interested her very little; but the supercilious tone of the worldly official (he had never delivered himself in that way before) repelled her; his contempt for Russia wounded her.  It had never occurred to Lisa that she was a patriot; but her heart was with the Russian people; the Russian turn of mind delighted her; she would talk for hours together without ceremony to the peasant-overseer of her mother’s property when he came to the town, and she talked to him as to an equal, without any of the condescension of a superior.  Lavretsky felt all this; he would not have troubled himself to answer Panshin by himself; he had spoken only for Lisa’s sake.  They had said nothing to one another, their eyes even had seldom met.  But they both knew that they had grown closer that evening, they knew that they liked! and disliked the same things.  On one point only were they divided; but Lisa secretly hoped to bring him to God.  They sat near Marfa Timofyevna, and appeared to be following her play; indeed, they were really following it, but meanwhile their hearts were full, and nothing was lost on them; for them the nightingale sang, and the stars shone, and the trees gently murmured, lulled to sleep by the summer warmth and softness.  Lavretsky was completely carried away, and surrendered himself wholly to his passion—­and rejoiced in it.  But no word can express what was passing in the pure heart of the young girl.  It was a mystery for herself.  Let it remain a mystery for all.  No one knows, no one has seen, nor will ever see, how the grain, destined to life and growth, swells and ripens in the bosom of the earth.