lonely, and broken-down--have you no pity for him? Can you wish to teaze him?"

Panshin was a little taken aback.

"You are right, Lisaveta Mihalovna," he declared. "It's my everlasting thoughtlessness that's to blame. No, don't contradict me; I know myself. So much harm has come to me from my want of thought. It's owing to that failing that I am thought to be an egoist."

Panshin paused. With whatever subject he began a conversation, he generally ended by talking of himself, and the subject was changed by him so easily, so smoothly and genially, that it seemed unconscious.

"In your own household, for instance," he went on, "your mother certainly wishes me well, she is so kind; you--well, I don't know your opinion of me; but on the other hand your aunt simply can't bear me. I must have offended her too by some thoughtless, stupid speech. You know I'm not a favourite of hers, am I?"

"No," Lisa admitted with some reluctance, "she doesn't like you."

Panshin ran his fingers quickly over the keys, and a scarcely perceptible smile glided over his lips.

"Well, and you?" he said, "do you too think me an egoist?"

"I know you very little," replied Lisa, "but I don't consider you an egoist; on the contrary, I can't help feeling grateful to you."

"I know, I know what you mean to say," Panshin interrupted, and again he ran his fingers over the keys: "for the music and the books I bring you, for the wretched sketches with which I adorn your album, and so forth. I might do all that--and be an egoist all the same. I venture to think that you don't find me a bore, and don't think me a bad fellow, but still you suppose that I--what's the saying?--would sacrifice friend or father for the sake of a witticism."

"You are careless and forgetful, like all men of the world," observed Lisa, "that is all."

Panshin frowned a little.

"Come," he said, "don't let us discuss me any more; let us play our sonata. There's only one thing I must beg of you," he added, smoothing out the leaves of the book on the music stand, "think what you like of me, call me an egoist even--so be it! but don't call me a man of the world; that name's insufferable to me.... Anch 'io sono pittore. I too am an artist, though a poor one--and that--I mean that I'm a poor artist, I shall show directly. Let us begin."

"Very well, let us begin," said Lisa.

The first adagio went fairly successfully though Panshin made more than one false note. His own compositions and what he had practised thoroughly he played very nicely, but he played at sight badly. So the second part of the sonata--a rather quick allegro--broke down completely; at the twentieth bar, Panshin, who was two bars behind, gave in, and pushed his chair back with a laugh.

"No!" he cried, "I can't play to-day; it's a good thing Lemm did not hear us; he would have had a fit."

Lisa got up, shut the piano, and turned round to Panshin.

"What are we going to do?" she asked.

"That's just like you, that question! You can never sit with your hands idle. Well, if you like let us sketch, since it's not quite dark. Perhaps the other muse, the muse of painting--what was her name? I have forgotten... will be more propitious to me. Where's your album? I remember, my landscape there is not finished."

Lisa went into the other room to fetch the album, and Panshin, left alone, drew a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, and rubbed his nails and looked as it were critically at his hands. He had beautiful white hands; on the second finger of his left hand he wore a spiral gold ring. Lisa came back; Panshin sat down at the window, and opened the album.

"Ah!" he exclaimed: "I see that you have begun to copy my landscape--and capitally too. Excellent! only just here--give me a pencil--the shadows are not put in strongly enough. Look."

And Panshin with a flourish added a few long strokes. He was for ever