Part 18

"He is a nice man: why should not I like him?"

"Ah!"--said Lavrétzky, and relapsed into silence. A half-mournful, half-sneering expression flitted across his face. His tenacious gaze discomfited Liza, but she continued to smile. "Well, God grant them happiness!"--he muttered, at last, as though to himself, and turned away his head.

Liza blushed.

"You are mistaken, Feódor Ivánitch,"--she said:--"there is no cause for your thinking.... But do not you like Vladímir Nikoláitch?"

"I do not."

"Why?"

"It seems to me, that he has no heart."

The smile vanished from Liza's face.

"You have become accustomed to judge people harshly,"--she said, after a long silence.

"I think not. What right have I to judge others harshly, when I myself stand in need of indulgence? Or have you forgotten that a lazy man is the only one who does not laugh at me?... Well,"--he added:--"and have you kept your promise?"

"What promise?"

"Have you prayed for me?"

"Yes, I have prayed, and I do pray for you every day. But please do not speak lightly of that."

Lavrétzky began to assure Liza, that such a thing had never entered his head, that he entertained a profound respect for all convictions; then he entered upon a discussion of religion, its significance in the history of mankind, the significance of Christianity....

"One must be a Christian,"--said Liza, not without a certain effort:--"not in order to understand heavenly things ... yonder ... earthly things, but because every man must die."

Lavrétzky, with involuntary surprise, raised his eyes to Liza's, and encountered her glance.

"What a word you have uttered!"--said he.

"The word is not mine,"--she replied.

"It is not yours.... But why do you speak of death?"

"I do not know. I often think about it."

"Often?"

"Yes."

"One would not say so, to look at you now: you have such a merry, bright face, you are smiling...."

"Yes, I am very merry now,"--returned Liza ingenuously.

Lavrétzky felt like seizing both her hands, and clasping them tightly.

"Liza, Liza!"--called Márya Dmítrievna,--"come hither, look! What a carp I have caught!"

"Immediately, maman,"--replied Liza, and went to her, but Lavrétzky remained on his willow-tree.

"I talk with her as though I were not a man whose life is finished," he said to himself. As she departed, Liza had hung her hat on a bough; with a strange, almost tender sentiment, Lavrétzky gazed at the hat, at its long, rather crumpled ribbons. Liza speedily returned to him, and again took up her stand on the raft.