Outside the window, which opened into the garden, it was also light, but it was a quite different light. The moon, which was almost full and already losing its golden tinge, floated over the tops of the tall limes and more and more lit up the thin white clouds which veiled it at intervals. In the pond, the surface of which, silvered in one place by the moon, was visible through the avenue, the frogs were croaking loudly. In a sweet-scented lilac-bush, whose dewy branches now and then swayed gently close to the window, some little birds fluttered slightly or lightly hopped from bough to bough.
“What wonderful weather!” the Count said, when he approached Lisa and sat down on the low windowsill. “You walk a good deal, I expect.”
“Yes,” said Lisa, not feeling the least shyness in speaking with the Count; “in the mornings about seven I see to what has to be attended to on the estate, and I take my mother’s ward, Pímotchka, with me for a walk.”
“It is pleasant to live in the country!” said the Count, putting his eyeglass to his eye, and looking now at the garden, now at Lisa. “And don’t you ever go out at night, by moonlight?”
“No. But two years ago uncle and I used to walk every moonlight night. He was troubled with a strange complaint—sleeplessness. When there was a full moon he could not sleep. His little room—that one—looks straight out into the garden, the window is low, but the moon shines straight into it.”
“How strange; why, I thought that was your room,” said the Count.
“No, I only sleep there tonight. You have my room.”
“Is it possible? Dear me, I shall never forgive myself for disturbing you in such a way!” said the Count, dropping the glass from his eye in proof of the sincerity of his feelings. “If I had known I was troubling you …”