She was beginning to fall into a doze, when suddenly a dreadful, piercing shriek awakened her. She sprang to her feet, rushed into Arátoff's study, and found him lying on the floor, as upon the night before.
But he did not come to himself as he had done the night before, work over him as they would. That night he was seized with a high fever, complicated by inflammation of the heart.
A few days later he died.
A strange circumstance accompanied his second swoon. When they lifted him up and put him to bed, there proved to be a small lock of woman's black hair clutched in his right hand. Where had that hair come from? Anna Semyónovna had such a lock, which she had kept after Clara's death; but why should she have given to Arátoff an object which was so precious to her? Could she have laid it into the diary, and not noticed the fact when she gave him the book?
In the delirium which preceded his death Arátoff called himself Romeo … after the poison; he talked about a marriage contracted, consummated;—said that now he knew the meaning of delight. Especially dreadful for Platonída Ivánovna was the moment when Arátoff, recovering consciousness, and seeing her by his bedside, said to her:
"Aunty, why art thou weeping? Is it because I must die? But dost thou not know that love is stronger than death?… Death! O Death, where is thy sting? Thou must not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice…."
And again the face of the dying man beamed with that same blissful smile which had made the poor old woman shudder so.
POEMS IN PROSE
(1878-1882)
From the Editor of the "European Messenger"