"Oh, what nonsense!--do stop. We'll have an argument about
Shakespeare."

"My head aches," repeated the old man.

"We set to work on the sonata of Beethoven without you," continued
Panshin, taking hold of him affectionately and smiling brightly, "but we
couldn't get on at all. Fancy, I couldn't play two notes together
correctly."

"You'd better have sung your song again," replied Lemm, removing
Panshin's hands, and he walked away.

Lisa ran after him. She overtook him on the stairs.

"Christopher Fedoritch, I want to tell you," she said to him in German,
accompanying him over the short green grass of the yard to the gate, "I
did wrong--forgive me."

Lemm made no answer.

"I showed Vladimir Nikolaitch your cantata; I felt sure he would
appreciate it,--and he did like it very much really."

Lemm stopped.

"It's no matter," he said in Russian, and then added in his own
language, "but he cannot understand anything; how is it you don't see
that? He's a dilettante--and that's all!"