irely impenetrable, and everywhere there was an odour of thickets,
forest, grass, and lilacs.

"What a good place this would be to play at puss-in-the-corner,"--suddenly
cried Lyenotchka, as they entered a small, verdant glade, hemmed in by
lindens:--"by the way, there are five of us."

"And hast thou forgotten Feodor Ivanitch?"--her brother observed to
her.... "Or art thou not reckoning in thyself?"

Lyenotchka blushed faintly.

"But is it possible that Feodor Ivanitch, at his age, can..."--she
began.

"Please play,"--interposed Lavretzky, hastily:--"pay no heed to me. It
will be all the more agreeable to me if I know that I am not embarrassing
you. And there is no need for you to bother about me; we old fellows have
occupations of which you, as yet, know nothing, and which no diversion
can replace: memories."

The young people listened to Lavretzky with courteous and almost mocking
respect,--exactly as though their teacher were reading them a
lesson,--and suddenly all of them flew away from him, and ran over the
glade; four of them took up their stand near the trees, one stood in the
centre,--and the fun began.

But Lavretzky returned to the house, went into the dining-room,
approached the piano, and touched one of the keys: a faint, but pure
sound rang out, and secretly trembled in his heart: with that note began
that inspired melody wherewith, long ago, on that same blissful night,
Lemm, the dead Lemm, had led him to such raptures. Then Lavretzky passed
into the drawing-room, and did not emerge from it for a long time: in
that room, where he had so often seen Liza, her image rose up before him
more vividly than ever; it seemed to him, that he felt around him the
traces of her presence; but his grief for her was exhausting and not
light: there was in it none of the tranquillity which death inspires.
Liza was still living somewhere, dully, far away; he thought of her as
among the living, but did not recognise the young girl whom he had once
loved in that pale spectre swathed in the conventual garment, surrounded
by smoky clouds of incense. Lavretzky would not have recognised himself,
had he been able to contemplate himself as he mentally contemplated Liza.
In the course of those eight years the crisis had, at last, been effected
in his life; that crisis which many do not experience, but without which
it is not possible to remain an honourable man to the end: he had really
ceased to think of his own happiness,