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!" "You are unjust to him," replied Lisa, "he understands everything, and he can do almost everything himself." "Yes, everything second-rate, cheap, scamped work.

That pleases, and he pleases, and he is glad it is so--and so much the better.

I'm not angry; the cantata and I--we are a pair of old fools; I'm a little ashamed, but it's no matter." "Forgive me, Christopher Fedoritch," Lisa said again.
"It's no matter," he repeated in Russian, "you're a good girl...

but here is some one coming to see you.Goodbye.You are a very good girl." And Lemm moved with hastened steps towards the gate, through which had entered some gentleman unknown to him in a grey coat and a wide straw hat.

Bowing politely to him (he always saluted all new faces in the town of O-----; from acquaintances he always turned aside in the street--that was the rule he had laid down for himself), Lemm passed by and disappeared behind the fence.