"My head aches," repeated the old man.
"We tried to play Beethoven's sonata without you," continued Panshine, caressingly throwing his arm over the old man's shoulder and smiling sweetly; "but we didn't succeed in bringing it to a harmonious conclusion. Just imagine, I couldn't play two consecutive notes right."
"You had better have played your romance over again," replied Lemm; then, escaping from Panshine's hold he went out of the room.
Liza ran after him, and caught him on the steps.
"Christopher Fedorovich, I want to speak to you," she said in German, as led him across the short green grass to the gate. "I have done you a wrong—forgive me."
Lemm made no reply.
"I showed your cantata to Vladimir Nikolaevich; I was sure he would appreciate it, and, indeed, he was exceedingly pleased with it."
Lemm stopped still.
"It's no matter," he said in Russian, and then added in his native tongue,—"But he is utterly incapable of understanding it. How is it you don't see that? He is a dilettante—that is all."
"You are unjust towards him," replied Liza. "He understands every thing, and can do almost every thing himself."