"I suppose it's time for me to go."
"No, stay a little.... We must have a talk."
Again they were silent. He sat down to the piano, struck one chord, then began playing, and sang softly, "What does the coming day bring me?" but as usual he got up suddenly and tossed his head.
"Play something," Zinaida Fyodorovna asked him.
"What shall I play?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders. "I have forgotten everything. I've given it up long ago."
Looking at the ceiling as though trying to remember, he played two pieces of Tchaikovsky with exquisite expression, with such warmth, such insight! His face was just as usual—neither stupid nor intelligent—and it seemed to me a perfect marvel that a man whom I was accustomed to see in the midst of the most degrading, impure surroundings, was capable of such purity, of rising to a feeling so lofty, so far beyond my reach. Zinaida Fyodorovna's face glowed, and she walked about the drawing-room in emotion.
"Wait a bit, Godmother; if I can remember it, I will play you something," he said; "I heard it played on the violoncello."
Beginning timidly and picking out the notes, and then gathering confidence, he played Saint-Saëns's "Swan Song." He played it through, and then played it a second time.
"It's nice, isn't it?" he said.
Moved by the music, Zinaida Fyodorovna stood beside him and asked: