Madame Kalitine looked tenderly at her young partner; but he assumed a still more important and pre-occupied look, and called fourteen kings.
XXIX.
Lavretsky was no longer a very young man. He could not long delude himself as to the nature of the feeling with which Liza had inspired him. On that day he became finally convinced that he was in love with her. That conviction did not give him much pleasure.
"Is it possible," he thought, "that at five-and-thirty I have nothing else to do than to confide my heart a second time to a woman's keeping? But Liza is not like her. She would not have demanded humiliating sacrifices from me. She would not have led me astray from my occupations. She would have inspired me herself with a love for honorable hard work, and we should have gone forward together towards some noble end. Yes," he said, bringing his reflections to a close, "all that is very well. But the worst of it is that she will not go anywhere with me. It was not for nothing that she told me she was afraid of me. And as to her not being in love with Panshine—that is but a poor consolation!"
Lavretsky went to Vasilievskoe; but he could not manage to spend even four days there—so wearisome did it seem to him. Moreover, he was tormented by suspense. The news which M. Jules had communicated required confirmation, and he had not yet received any letters. He returned to town, and passed the evening at the Kalitines'. He could easily see that Madame Kalitine had been set against him; but he succeeded in mollifying her a little by losing some fifteen roubles to her at piquet. He also contrived to get half-an-hour alone with Liza, in spite of her mother having recommended her, only the evening before, not to be too intimate with a man "qui a tin si grand ridicule."
He found a change in her. She seemed to have become more contemplative. She blamed him for stopping away; and she asked him if he would not go to church the next day—the next day being Sunday.
"Do come," she continued, before he had time to answer. "We will pray together for the repose of her soul." Then she added that she did not know what she ought to do—that she did not know whether she had any right to make Panshine wait longer for her decision.
"Why?" asked Lavretsky.
"Because," she replied, "I begin to suspect by this time what that decision will be."
Then she said that she had a headache, and went to her room, after irresolutely holding out the ends of her fingers to Lavretsky.