The doctor went away ... and Platonida Ivanovna grieved.... She sent to the surgery, though, for the medicine, which Aratov would not take, in spite of her entreaties. He refused any herb-tea too. ‘And why are you so uneasy, dear?’ he said to her; ‘I assure you, I’m at this moment the sanest and happiest man in the whole world!’ Platonida Ivanovna could only shake her head. Towards evening he grew rather feverish; and still he insisted that she should not stay in his room, but should go to sleep in her own. Platonida Ivanovna obeyed; but she did not undress, and did not lie down. She sat in an arm-chair, and was all the while listening and murmuring her prayers.
She was just beginning to doze, when suddenly she was awakened by a terrible piercing shriek. She jumped up, rushed into Aratov’s room, and as on the night before, found him lying on the floor.
But he did not come to himself as on the previous night, in spite of all they could do. He fell the same night into a high fever, complicated by failure of the heart.
A few days later he passed away.
A strange circumstance attended his second fainting-fit. When they lifted him up and laid him on his bed, in his clenched right hand they found a small tress of a woman’s dark hair. Where did this lock of hair come from? Anna Semyonovna had such a lock of hair left by Clara; but what could induce her to give Aratov a relic so precious to her? Could she have put it somewhere in the diary, and not have noticed it when she lent the book?
In the delirium that preceded his death, Aratov spoke of himself as Romeo ... after the poison; spoke of marriage, completed and perfect; of his knowing now what rapture meant. Most terrible of all for Platosha was the minute when Aratov, coming a little to himself, and seeing her beside his bed, said to her, ‘Aunt, what are you crying for?—because I must die? But don’t you know that love is stronger than death?... Death! death! where is thy sting? You should not weep, but rejoice, even as I rejoice....’
And once more on the face of the dying man shone out the rapturous smile, which gave the poor old woman such cruel pain.