Groholsky pondered.  His pale face wore a frown.

“Let us go on always as we are now,” said Liza.  “Let him find out for himself, if he wants to.”

“But you know that . . . is sinful, and besides the fact is you are mine, and no one has the right to think that you do not belong to me but to someone else!  You are mine!  I will not give way to anyone! . . .  I am sorry for him—­God knows how sorry I am for him, Liza!  It hurts me to see him!  But . . . it can’t be helped after all.  You don’t love him, do you?  What’s the good of your going on being miserable with him?  We must have it out!  We will have it out with him, and you will come to me.  You are my wife, and not his.  Let him do what he likes.  He’ll get over his troubles somehow. . . .  He is not the first, and he won’t be the last. . . .  Will you run away?  Eh?  Make haste and tell me!  Will you run away?”

Liza got up and looked inquiringly at Groholsky.

“Run away?”

“Yes. . . .  To my estate. . . .  Then to the Crimea. . . .  We will tell him by letter. . . .  We can go at night.  There is a train at half past one.  Well?  Is that all right?”

Liza scratched the bridge of her nose, and hesitated.

“Very well,” she said, and burst into tears.

Patches of red came out of her cheeks, her eyes swelled, and tears flowed down her kittenish face. . . .

“What is it?” cried Groholsky in a flutter.  “Liza! what’s the matter?  Come! what are you crying for?  What a girl!  Come, what is it?  Darling!  Little woman!”

Liza held out her hands to Groholsky, and hung on his neck.  There was a sound of sobbing.

“I am sorry for him . . .” muttered Liza.  “Oh, I am so sorry for him!”

“Sorry for whom?”

“Va—­Vanya. . . .”

“And do you suppose I’m not?  But what’s to be done?  We are causing him suffering. . . .  He will be unhappy, will curse us . . . but is it our fault that we love one another?”

As he uttered the last word, Groholsky darted away from Liza as though he had been stung and sat down in an easy chair.  Liza sprang away from his neck and rapidly—­in one instant—­dropped on the lounge.

They both turned fearfully red, dropped their eyes, and coughed.

A tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty, in the uniform of a government clerk, had walked into the drawing-room.  He had walked in unnoticed.  Only the bang of a chair which he knocked in the doorway had warned the lovers of his presence, and made them look round.  It was the husband.

They had looked round too late.

He had seen Groholsky’s arm round Liza’s waist, and had seen Liza hanging on Groholsky’s white and aristocratic neck.

“He saw us!” Liza and Groholsky thought at the same moment, while they did not know what to do with their heavy hands and embarrassed eyes. . . .

The petrified husband, rosy-faced, turned white.