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Aratoff fell asleep immediately, and slept until morning. He rose in a fine frame of mind … although he regretted something…. He felt light and free. “What romantic fancies one does devise,” he said to himself with a smile. He did not once glance either at the stereoscope or the leaf which he had torn out. But immediately after breakfast he set off to see Kupfer.

What drew him thither … he dimly recognised.

XVI

Aratoff found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him, reproached him for having quite forgotten him and his aunt, listened to fresh laudations of the golden woman, the Princess, from whom Kupfer had just received,–from Yaroslavl,–a skull-cap embroidered with fish-scales … and then suddenly sitting down in front of Kupfer, and looking him straight in the eye, he announced that he had been to Kazan.

“Thou hast been to Kazan? Why so?”

“Why, because I wished to collect information about that … Clara Militch.”

“The girl who poisoned herself?”

“Yes.”

Kupfer shook his head.–“What a fellow thou art! And such a sly one! Thou hast travelled a thousand versts there and back … and all for what? Hey? If there had only been some feminine interest there! Then I could understand everything! every sort of folly!”–Kupfer ruffled up his hair.–“But for the sake of collecting materials, as you learned men put it…. No, I thank you! That’s what the committee of statistics exists for!–Well, and what about it–didst thou make acquaintance with the old woman and with her sister? She’s a splendid girl, isn’t she?”

“Splendid,” assented Aratoff.–“She communicated to me many curious things.”

“Did she tell thee precisely how Clara poisoned herself?”

“Thou meanest … what dost thou mean?”

“Why, in what manner?”

“No…. She was still in such affliction…. I did not dare to question her too much. But was there anything peculiar about it?”

“Of course there was. Just imagine: she was to have acted that very day–and she did act. She took a phial of poison with her to the theatre, drank it before the first act, and in that condition played through the whole of that act. With the poison inside her! What dost thou think of that strength of will? What character, wasn’t it? And they say that she never sustained her role with so much feeling, with so much warmth! The audience suspected nothing, applauded, recalled her…. But as soon as the curtain fell she dropped down where she stood on the stage. She began to writhe … and writhe … and at the end of an hour her spirit fled! But is it possible I did not tell thee that? It was mentioned in the newspapers also.”

Aratoff’s hands suddenly turned cold and his chest began to heave. “No, thou didst not tell me that,” he said at last.–“And dost thou not know what the piece was?”

Kupfer meditated.–“I was told the name of the piece … a young girl who has been betrayed appears in it…. It must be some drama or other. Clara was born for dramatic parts. Her very appearance…. But where art thou going?” Kupfer interrupted himself, perceiving that Aratoff was picking up his cap.

“I do not feel quite well,” replied Aratoff. “Good-bye…. I will drop in some other time.”

Kupfer held him back and looked him in the face.–“What a nervous fellow thou art, brother! Just look at thyself…. Thou hast turned as white as clay.”

“I do not feel well,” repeated Aratoff, freeing himself from Kupfer’s hands and going his way. Only at that moment did it become clear to him that he had gone to Kupfer with the sole object of talking about Clara….

“About foolish, about unhappy Clara”….

But on reaching home he speedily recovered his composure to a certain extent.

The circumstances which had attended Clara’s death at first exerted a shattering impression upon him … but later on that acting “with the poison inside her,” as Kupfer had expressed it, seemed to him a monstrous phrase, a piece of bravado, and he tried not to think of it, fearing to arouse within himself a feeling akin to aversion. But at dinner, as he sat opposite Platosha, he suddenly remembered her nocturnal apparition, recalled that bob-tailed wrapper, that cap with the tall ribbon (and why should there be a ribbon on a night-cap?), the whole of that ridiculous figure, at which all his visions had dispersed into dust, as though at the whistle of the machinist in a fantastic ballet! He even made Platosha repeat the tale of how she had heard him shout, had taken fright, had leaped out of bed, had not been able at once to find either her own door or his, and so forth. In the evening he played cards with her and went off to his own room in a somewhat sad but fairly tranquil state of mind.