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Lemm's outward appearance was not in his favor. He was short and high-shouldered, his shoulder-blades stuck out awry, his feet were large and flat, and his red hands, marked by swollen veins, had hard, stiff fingers, tipped with nails of a pale blue color.
"My wife has come," said Lavretsky, with drooping head, and then he suddenly burst into a fit of involuntary laughter. Lemm's face expressed astonishment, but he preserved a grave silence, only wrapping his dressing-gown tighter around him. "I suppose you don't know," continued Lavretsky. "I supposed I saw in a newspaper that she was dead." "O h! Was it lately you saw that?" asked Lemm. "Yes."
The old man did not say a word, but with a dignified motion of the hand he threw the key of the door out of the window into the street. Lavretsky hastily ran up-stairs, entered the room, and was going to fling himself into Lemm's arms.
He could not rid himself of the image, the voice, the eyes of his wife... and he cursed himself, he cursed everything in the world. Wearied out he went towards morning to Lemm's.
At the conclusion of the great garden-scene, Turgenev, by what seems the pure inspiration of genius, has expressed the ecstasy of love in old Lemm's wonderful music It is as though the passion of the lovers had mounted to that pitch where language would be utterly inadequate; indeed, one feels in reading that scene that the next page must be an anti-climax.
Chance favored him, and he was left alone with her in the drawing-room. They began to talk. As a general rule she was never shy with any one, and by this time she had succeeded in becoming accustomed to him. He listened to what she said, and as he looked at her face, he musingly repeated Lemm's words, and agreed with him.
He cursed himself, he cursed every thing in the world. Utterly tired out, he came to Lemm's house before the dawn. For a long time he could not get the door opened; at last the old man's nightcapped head appeared at the window.
He raised his head and suddenly broke into involuntary laughter. Lemm's face expressed bewilderment, but he did not even smile, only wrapped himself closer in his dressing-gown. "Of course, you don't know," Lavretsky went on, "I had imagined... I read in a paper that she was dead." "O oh, did you read that lately?" asked Lemm. "Yes, lately." "O oh," repeated the old man, raising his eyebrows.
"Well, we will live on still; she has not entirely deprived us " he did not say who, or of what. Then he began to think about Liza; that she could scarcely be in love with Panshine; that if he had met her under other circumstances God knows what might have come of it; that he understood Lemm's feelings about her now, although she had "no words of her own."
They had some talk; she had had time by now to grow used to him and she was not shy as a rule with any one. He listened to her, watched her, and mentally repeated Lemm's words, and agreed with them.
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