Half an hour later Lavretsky was standing before the little garden gate.  He found it locked and was obliged to get over the fence.  He returned to the town and walked along the slumbering streets.  A sense of immense, unhoped-for happiness filled his soul; all his doubts had died away.  “Away, dark phantom of the past,” he thought.  “She loves me, she will be mine.”  Suddenly it seemed to him that in the air over his head were floating strains of divine triumphant music.  He stood still.  The music resounded in still greater magnificence; a mighty flood of melody—­and all his bliss seemed speaking and singing in its strains.  He looked about him; the music floated down from two upper windows of a small house.

“Lemm?” cried Lavretsky as he ran to the house.  “Lemm!  Lemm!” he repeated aloud.

The sounds died away and the figure of the old man in a dressing-gown, with his throat bare and his hair dishevelled, appeared at the window.

“Aha!” he said with dignity, “is it you?”

“Christopher Fedoritch, what marvellous music! for mercy’s sake, let me in.”

Without uttering a word, the old man with a majestic flourish of the arm dropped the key of the street door from the window.

Lavretsky hastened up-stairs, went into the room and was about to rush up to Lemm; but the latter imperiously motioned him to a seat, saying abruptly in Russian, “Sit down and listen,” sat down himself to the piano, and looking proudly and severely about him, he began to play.  It was long since Lavretsky had listened to anything like it.  The sweet passionate melody went to his heart from the first note; it was glowing and languishing with inspiration, happiness and beauty; it swelled and melted away; it touched on all that is precious, mysterious, and holy on earth.  It breathed of deathless sorrow and mounted dying away to the heavens.  Lavretsky drew himself up, and rose cold and pale with ecstasy.  This music seemed to clutch his very soul, so lately shaken by the rapture of love, the music was glowing with love too.  “Again!” he whispered as the last chord sounded.  The old man threw him an eagle glance, struck his hand on his chest and saying deliberately in his own tongue, “This is my work, I am a great musician,” he played again his marvellous composition.  There was no candle in the room; the light of the rising moon fell aslant on the window; the soft air was vibrating with sound; the poor little room seemed a holy place, and the old man’s head stood out noble and inspired in the silvery half light.  Lavretsky went up to him and embraced him.  At first Lemm did not respond to his embrace and even pushed him away with his elbow.  For a long while without moving in any limb he kept the same severe, almost morose expression, and only growled out twice, “aha.”  At last his face relaxed, changed, and grew calmer, and in response to Lavretsky’s warm congratulations he smiled a little at first, then burst into tears, and sobbed weakly like a child.