“No, I believe it won’t be just yet,” said Lidia Ivanovna, who had been meanwhile watching the movements of the Frenchman. Landau got up and came to them.

“Do you allow me to listen?” he asked.

“Oh, yes; I did not want to disturb you,” said Lidia Ivanovna, gazing tenderly at him; “sit here with us.”

“One has only not to close one’s eyes to shut out the light,” Alexey Alexandrovitch went on.

“Ah, if you knew the happiness we know, feeling His presence ever in our hearts!” said Countess Lidia Ivanovna with a rapturous smile.

“But a man may feel himself unworthy sometimes to rise to that height,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, conscious of hypocrisy in admitting this religious height, but at the same time unable to bring himself to acknowledge his freethinking views before a person who, by a single word to Pomorsky, might procure him the coveted appointment.