Again Arátoff gazed intently at his aunt, and burst into a loud laugh…. The figure of the kind old woman in nightcap and wrapper, with her frightened, long-drawn face, really was extremely comical. All that mysterious something which had surrounded him, had stifled him, all those delusions dispersed on the instant.
"No, Platósha, my dear, it is not necessary," he said.—"Forgive me for having involuntarily alarmed you. May your rest be tranquil—and I will go to sleep also."
Platonída Ivánovna stood a little while longer on the spot where she was, pointed at the candle, grumbled: "Why dost thou not extinguish it? … there will be a catastrophe before long!"—and as she retired, could not refrain from making the sign of the cross over him from afar.
Arátoff 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
Arátoff 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 Yaroslávl,—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 Kazán.
"Thou hast been to Kazán? Why so?"
"Why, because I wished to collect information about that … Clara
Mílitch."
"The girl who poisoned herself?"