‘The first forty days?’
‘Yes; and then the ordeals follow.’
Aratov was astounded at his aunt’s knowledge, and went off to his room. And again he felt the same thing, the same power over him. This power showed itself in Clara’s image being constantly before him to the minutest details, such details as he seemed hardly to have observed in her lifetime; he saw ... saw her fingers, her nails, the little hairs on her cheeks near her temples, the little mole under her left eye; he saw the slight movement of her lips, her nostrils, her eyebrows ... and her walk, and how she held her head a little on the right side ... he saw everything. He did not by any means take a delight in it all, only he could not help thinking of it and seeing it. The first night after his return he did not, however, dream of her ... he was very tired, and slept like a log. But directly he waked up, she came back into his room again, and seemed to establish herself in it, as though she were the mistress, as though by her voluntary death she had purchased the right to it, without asking him or needing his permission. He took up her photograph, he began reproducing it, enlarging it. Then he took it into his head to fit it to the stereoscope. He had a great deal of trouble to do it ... at last he succeeded. He fairly shuddered when through the glass he looked upon her figure, with the semblance of corporeal solidity given it by the stereoscope. But the figure was grey, as though covered with dust ... and moreover the eyes—the eyes looked always to one side, as though turning away. A long, long while he stared at them, as though expecting them to turn to him ... he even half-closed his eyelids on purpose ... but the eyes remained immovable, and the whole figure had the look of some sort of doll. He moved away, flung himself in an armchair, took out the leaf from her diary, with the words underlined, and thought, ‘Well, lovers, they say, kiss the words traced by the hand of the beloved—but I feel no inclination to do that—and the handwriting I think ugly. But that line contains my sentence.’ Then he recalled the promise he had made Anna about the article. He sat down to the table, and set to work upon it, but everything he wrote struck him as so false, so rhetorical ... especially so false ... as though he did not believe in what he was writing nor in his own feelings.... And Clara herself seemed so utterly unknown and uncomprehended! She seemed to withhold herself from him. ‘No!’ he thought, throwing down the pen ... ‘either authorship’s altogether not my line, or I must wait a little!’ He fell to recalling his visit to the Milovidovs, and all Anna had told him, that sweet, delightful Anna.... A word she had uttered—‘pure’—suddenly struck him. It was as though something scorched him, and shed light. ‘Yes,’ he said aloud, ‘she was pure, and I am pure.... That’s what gave her this power.’
Thoughts of the immortality of the soul, of the life beyond the grave crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ And in Schiller: ‘And the dead shall live!’ (Auch die Todten sollen leben!)
And too, he thought, in Mitskevitch: ‘I will love thee to the end of time ... and beyond it!’ And an English writer had said: ‘Love is stronger than death.’ The text from Scripture produced particular effect on Aratov.... He tried to find the place where the words occurred.... He had no Bible; he went to ask Platosha for one. She wondered, she brought out, however, a very old book in a warped leather binding, with copper clasps, covered with candle wax, and handed it over to Aratov. He bore it off to his own room, but for a long time he could not find the text ... he stumbled, however, on another: ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (S. John xv. 13).
He thought: ‘That’s not right. It ought to be: Greater power hath no man.’
‘But if she did not lay down her life for me at all? If she made an end of herself simply because life had become a burden to her? What if, after all, she did not come to that meeting for anything to do with love at all?’
But at that instant he pictured to himself Clara before their parting on the boulevard.... He remembered the look of pain on her face, and the tears and the words, ‘Ah, you understood nothing!’
No! he could have no doubt why and for whom she had laid down her life....
So passed that whole day till night-time.