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During the whole time she was singing Aratoff had been scanning Clara’s face. It seemed to him that her eyes, athwart her contracted lashes, were again turned on him. But he was particularly struck by the impassiveness of that face, that forehead, those brows, and only when she uttered her passionate cry did he notice a row of white, closely-set teeth gleaming warmly from between her barely parted lips. Kupfer stepped up to him.

“Well, brother, what dost thou think of her?” he asked, all beaming with satisfaction.

“She has a fine voice,” replied Aratoff, “but she does not know how to sing yet, she has had no real school.” (Why he said this and what he meant by “school” the Lord only knows!)

Kupfer was surprised.–“She has no school,” he repeated slowly…. “Well, now…. She can still study. But on the other hand, what soul! But just wait until thou hast heard her recite Tatyana’s letter.”

He ran away from Aratoff, and the latter thought: “Soul! With that impassive face!”–He thought that she bore herself and moved like a hypnotised person, like a somnambulist…. And, at the same time, she was indubitably…. Yes! she was indubitably staring at him.

Meanwhile the “morning” went on. The fat man in spectacles presented himself again; despite his serious appearance he imagined that he was a comic artist and read a scene from Gogol, this time without evoking a single token of approbation. The flute-player flitted past once more; again the pianist thundered; a young fellow of twenty, pomaded and curled, but with traces of tears on his cheeks, sawed out some variations on his fiddle. It might have appeared strange that in the intervals between the recitations and the music the abrupt notes of a French horn were wafted, now and then, from the artists’ room; but this instrument was not used, nevertheless. It afterward came out that the amateur who had offered to perform on it had been seized with a panic at the moment when he should have made his appearance before the audience. So at last, Clara Militch appeared again.

She held in her hand a small volume of Pushkin; but during her reading she never once glanced at it…. She was obviously frightened; the little book shook slightly in her fingers. Aratoff also observed the expression of dejection which now overspread her stern features. The first line: “I write to you … what would you more?” she uttered with extreme simplicity, almost ingenuously,–stretching both arms out in front of her with an ingenuous, sincere, helpless gesture. Then she began to hurry a little; but beginning with the line: “Another! Nay! to none on earth could I have given e’er my heart!” she regained her self-possession, and grew animated; and when she reached the words: “All, all life hath been a pledge of faithful meeting thus with thee,”–her hitherto rather dull voice rang out enthusiastically and boldly, and her eyes riveted themselves on Aratoff with a boldness and directness to match. She went on with the same enthusiasm, and only toward the close did her voice again fall, and in it and in her face her previous dejection was again depicted. She made a complete muddle, as the saying is, of the last four lines,–the little volume of Pushkin suddenly slipped from her hands, and she beat a hasty retreat.

The audience set to applauding and recalling her in desperate fashion…. One theological student,–a Little Russian,–among others, bellowed so loudly: “Muiluitch! Muiluitch!”[58] that his neighbour politely and sympathetically begged him to “spare himself, as a future proto-deacon!”[59] But Aratoff immediately rose and betook himself to the entrance. Kupfer overtook him….

FOOTNOTES:
[58]
The Little Russians (among other peculiarities
of pronunciation attached to their dialect) use the
guttural instead of the clear i.–TRANSLATOR.

[59]
A bishop or priest in the Russian Church is
not supposed to speak loudly, no matter how fine a
voice he may possess. The deacon, on the contrary,
or the proto-deacon (attached to a cathedral) is
supposed to have a huge voice, and, especially at
certain points, to roar at the top of his lungs.
He sometimes cracks his voice–which is what the
sympathetic neighbour was hinting at here.–TRANSLATOR.