Panshine slightly frowned.

“Listen,” he said; “don’t let’s talk any more about me; let us begin our sonata.  Only there is one thing I will ask of you,” he added, as he smoothed the sheets which lay on the music-desk with his hand; “think of me what you will, call me egotist even, I don’t object to that; but don’t call me a man of the world, that name is insufferable. Anch’io sono pittore.  I too am an artist, though but a poor one, and that—­namely, that I am a poor artist—­I am going to prove to you on the spot.  Let us begin.”

“Very good, let us begin,” said Liza.

The first adagio went off with tolerable success, although Panshine made several mistakes.  What he had written himself, and what he had learnt by heart, he played very well, but he could not play at sight correctly.  Accordingly the second part of the sonata—­tolerably quick allegro—­would not do at all.  At the twentieth bar Panshine, who was a couple of bars behind, gave in, and pushed back his chair with a laugh.

“No!” he exclaimed, “I cannot play to-day.  It is fortunate that Lemm cannot hear us; he would have had a fit.”

Liza stood up, shut the piano, and then turned to Panshine.

“What shall we do then?” she asked.

“That question is so like you!  You can never sit with folded hands for a moment.  Well then, if you feel inclined, let’s draw a little before it becomes quite dark.  Perhaps another Muse—­the Muse of painting—­what’s her name?  I’ve forgotten—­will be more propitious to me.  Where is your album?  I remember the landscape I was drawing in it was not finished.”

Liza went into another room for the album, and Panshine, finding himself alone, took a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, rubbed his nails and looked sideways at his hands.  They were very white and well shaped; on the second finger of the left hand he wore a spiral gold ring.

Liza returned; Panshine seated himself by the window and opened the album.

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “I see you have begun to copy my landscape—­and capitally—­very good indeed—­only—­just give me the pencil—­the shadows are not laid in black enough.  Look here.”

And Panshine added some long strokes with a vigorous touch.  He always drew the same landscape—­large dishevelled trees in the foreground, in the middle distance a plain, and on the horizon an indented chain of hills.  Liza looked over his shoulder at his work.

“In drawing, as also in life in general,” said Panshine, turning his head now to the right, now to the left, “lightness and daring—­those are the first requisites.”

At this moment Lemm entered the room, and after bowing gravely, was about to retire; but Panshine flung the album and pencil aside, and prevented him from leaving the room.

“Where are you going, dear Christoph Fedorovich?  Won’t you stay and take tea?”

“I am going home,” said Lemm, in a surly voice; “my head aches.”