"That is of no importance,"—said Lavrétzky:—"the important point is, that you do not love him."
"Stop,—what sort of a conversation is this! I keep having visions of your dead wife, and you are terrible to me!"
"My Lizéta plays charmingly, does she not, Valdemar?"—Márya Dmítrievna was saying to Pánshin at the same moment.
"Yes,"—replied Pánshin;—"very charmingly."
Márya Dmítrievna gazed tenderly at her young partner; but the latter assumed a still more important and careworn aspect, and announced fourteen kings.
XXXI
Lavrétzky was not a young man; he could not long deceive himself as to the sentiments with which Liza had inspired him; he became definitively convinced, on that day, that he had fallen in love with her. This conviction brought no great joy to him. "Is it possible," he thought, "that at the age of five and thirty I have nothing better to do than to put my soul again into the hands of a woman? But Liza is not like that one; she would not require from me shameful sacrifices; she would not draw me away from my occupations; she herself would encourage me to honourable, severe toil, and we would advance together toward a fine goal. Yes," he wound up his meditations:—"all that is good, but the bad thing is, that she will not in the least wish to marry me. It was not for nothing that she told me, that I am terrible to her. On the other hand, she does not love that Pánshin either.... A poor consolation!"
Lavrétzky rode out to Vasílievskoe; but he did not remain four days,—it seemed so irksome to him there. He was tortured, also, by expectancy: the information imparted by M—r. Jules required confirmation, and he had received no letters. He returned to the town, and sat out the evening at the Kalítins'. It was easy for him to see, that Márya Dmítrievna had risen in revolt against him; but he succeeded in appeasing her somewhat by losing fifteen rubles to her at picquet,—and he spent about half an hour alone with Liza, in spite of the fact that her mother, no longer ago than the day before, had advised her not to be too familiar with a man "qui a un si grand ridicule." He found a change in her: she seemed, somehow, to have become more thoughtful, she upbraided him for his absence, and asked him—would he not go to church on the following morning (the next day was Sunday)?