“Yes, I will bring you an answer.”
Lemm sighed.
“Yes, my poor young friend; you are certainly an unlucky young man.”
Lavretsky wrote a few words to Lisa. He told her of his wife’s arrival, begged her to appoint a meeting with him,—then he flung himself on the narrow sofa, with his face to the wall; and the old man lay down on the bed, and kept muttering a long while, coughing and drinking off his decoction by gulps.
The morning came; they both got up. With strange eyes they looked at one another. At that moment Lavretsky longed to kill himself. The cook, Katrine, brought them some villainous coffee. It struck eight. Lemm put on his hat, and saying that he was going to give a lesson at the Kalitins’ at ten, but he could find a suitable pretext for going there now, he set off. Lavretsky flung himself again on the little sofa, and once more the same bitter laugh stirred in the depth of his soul. He thought of how his wife had driven him out of his house; he imagined Lisa’s position, covered his eyes and clasped his hands behind his head. At last Lemm came back and brought him a scrap of paper, on which Lisa had scribbled in pencil the following words: “We cannot meet to-day; perhaps, to-morrow evening. Good-bye.” Lavretsky thanked Lemm briefly and indifferently, and went home.
He found his wife at breakfast; Ada, in curl-papers, in a little white frock with blue ribbons, was eating her mutton cutlet. Varvara Pavlovna rose at once directly Lavretsky entered the room, and went to meet him with humility in her face. He asked her to follow him into the study, shut the door after them, and began to walk up and down; she sat down, modestly laying one hand over the other, and began to follow his movements with her eyes, which were still beautiful, though they were pencilled lightly under their lids.
For some time Lavretsky could not speak; he felt that he could not master himself, he saw clearly that Varvara Pavlovna was not in the least afraid of him, but was assuming an appearance of being ready to faint away in another instant.
“Listen, madam,” he began at last, breathing with difficulty and at moments setting his teeth: “it is useless for us to make pretense with one another; I don’t believe in your penitence; and even if it were sincere, to be with you again, to live with you, would be impossible for me.”
Varvara Pavlovna bit her lips and half-closed her eyes. “It is aversion,” she thought; “all is over; in his eyes I am not even a woman.”
“Impossible,” repeated Lavretsky, fastening the top buttons of his coat. “I don’t know what induced you to come here; I suppose you have come to the end of your money.”