Anna quickly took out of a table-drawer a thin exercise-book, ten pages, no more, and held it out to Aratov. He seized it eagerly, recognised the irregular sprawling handwriting, the handwriting of that anonymous letter, opened it at random, and at once lighted upon the following lines.

'Moscow, Tuesday ... June.—Sang and recited at a literary matinee. To-day is a vital day for me. It must decide my fate. (These words were twice underlined.) I saw again....' Here followed a few lines carefully erased. And then, 'No! no! no!.... Must go back to the old way, if only ...'

Aratov dropped the hand that held the diary, and his head slowly sank upon his breast.

'Read it!' cried Anna. 'Why don't you read it? Read it through from the beginning.... It would take only five minutes to read it all, though the diary extends over two years. In Kazan she used to write down nothing at all....'

Aratov got up slowly from his chair and flung himself on his knees before Anna.

She was simply petrified with wonder and dismay.

'Give me ... give me that diary,' Aratov began with failing voice, and he stretched out both hands to Anna. 'Give it me ... and the photograph ... you are sure to have some other one, and the diary I will return.... But I want it, oh, I want it!...'

In his imploring words, in his contorted features there was something so despairing that it looked positively like rage, like agony.... And he was in agony, truly. He could not himself have foreseen that such pain could be felt by him, and in a frenzy he implored forgiveness, deliverance ...

'Give it me,' he repeated.

'But ... you ... you were in love with my sister?' Anna said at last.

Aratov was still on his knees.

'I only saw her twice ... believe me!... and if I had not been impelled by causes, which I can neither explain nor fully understand myself,... if there had not been some power over me, stronger than myself.... I should not be entreating you ... I should not have come here. I want ... I must ... you yourself said I ought to defend her memory!'

'And you were not in love with my sister?' Anna asked a second time.

Aratov did not at once reply, and he turned aside a little, as though in pain.

'Well, then! I was! I was—I'm in love now,' he cried in the same tone of despair.

Steps were heard in the next room.

'Get up ... get up ...' said Anna hurriedly. 'Mamma is coming.'

Aratov rose.

'And take the diary and the photograph, in God's name! Poor, poor Katia!... But you will give me back the diary,' she added emphatically. 'And if you write anything, be sure to send it me.... Do you hear?'

The entrance of Madame Milovidov saved Aratov from the necessity of a reply. He had time, however, to murmur, 'You are an angel! Thanks! I will send anything I write....'

Madame Milovidov, half awake, did not suspect anything. So Aratov left Kazan with the photograph in the breast-pocket of his coat. The diary he gave back to Anna; but, unobserved by her, he cut out the page on which were the words underlined.

On the way back to Moscow he relapsed again into a state of petrifaction. Though he was secretly delighted that he had attained the object of his journey, still all thoughts of Clara he deferred till he should be back at home. He thought much more about her sister Anna. 'There,' he thought, 'is an exquisite, charming creature. What delicate comprehension of everything, what a loving heart, what a complete absence of egoism! And how girls like that spring up among us, in the provinces, and in such surroundings too! She is not strong, and not good-looking, and not young; but what a splendid helpmate she would be for a sensible, cultivated man! That's the girl I ought to have fallen in love with!' Such were Aratov's reflections ... but on his arrival in Moscow things put on quite a different complexion.

XIV

Platonida Ivanovna was unspeakably rejoiced at her nephew's return. There was no terrible chance she had not imagined during his absence. 'Siberia at least!' she muttered, sitting rigidly still in her little room; 'at least for a year!' The cook too had terrified her by the most well-authenticated stories of the disappearance of this and that young man of the neighbourhood. The perfect innocence and absence of revolutionary ideas in Yasha did not in the least reassure the old lady. 'For indeed ... if you come to that, he studies photography ... and that's quite enough for them to arrest him!' 'And behold, here was her darling Yasha back again, safe and sound. She observed, indeed, that he seemed thinner, and looked hollow in the face; natural enough, with no one to look after him! but she did not venture to question him about his journey. She asked at dinner. 'And is Kazan a fine town?' 'Yes,' answered Aratov. 'I suppose they're all Tartars living there?' 'Not only Tartars.' 'And did you get a Kazan dressing-gown while you were there?' 'No, I didn't.' With that the conversation ended.

But as soon as Aratov found himself alone in his own room, he quickly felt as though something were enfolding him about, as though he were once more in the power, yes, in the power of another life, another being. Though he had indeed said to Anna in that sudden delirious outburst that he was in love with Clara, that saying struck even him now as senseless and frantic. No, he was not in love; and how could he be in love with a dead woman, whom he had not even liked in her lifetime, whom he had almost forgotten? No, but he was in her power ... he no longer belonged to himself. He was captured. So completely captured, that he did not even attempt to free himself by laughing at his own absurdity, nor by trying to arouse if not a conviction, at least a hope in himself that it would all pass, that it was nothing but nerves, nor by seeking for proofs, nor by anything! 'If I meet him, I will capture him,' he recalled those words of Clara's Anna had repeated to him. Well, he was captured. But was not she dead? Yes, her body was dead ... but her soul?... is not that immortal?... does it need corporeal organs to show its power? Magnetism has proved to us the influence of one living human soul over another living human soul.... Why should not this influence last after death, if the soul remains living? But to what end? What can come of it? But can we, as a rule, apprehend what is the object of all that takes place about us? These ideas so absorbed Aratov that he suddenly asked Platosha at tea-time whether she believed in the immortality of the soul. She did not for the first minute understand what his question was, then she crossed herself and answered. 'She should think so indeed! The soul not immortal!' 'And, if so, can it have any influence after death?' Aratov asked again. The old lady replied that it could ... pray for us, that is to say; at least, when it had passed through all its ordeals, awaiting the last dread judgment. But for the first forty days the soul simply hovered about the place where its death had occurred.

'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.

XV

Aratov went to bed early, without feeling specially sleepy, but he hoped to find repose in bed. The strained condition of his nerves brought about an exhaustion far more unbearable than the bodily fatigue of the journey and the railway. However, exhausted as he was, he could not get to sleep. He tried to read ... but the lines danced before his eyes. He put out the candle, and darkness reigned in his room. But still he lay sleepless, with his eyes shut.... And it began to seem to him some one was whispering in his ear.... 'The beating of the heart, the pulse of the blood,' he thought.... But the whisper passed into connected speech. Some one was talking in Russian hurriedly, plaintively, and indistinctly. Not one separate word could he catch.... But it was the voice of Clara.

Aratov opened his eyes, raised himself, leaned on his elbow.... The voice grew fainter, but kept up its plaintive, hurried talk, indistinct as before....

It was unmistakably Clara's voice.

Unseen fingers ran light arpeggios up and down the keys of the piano ... then the voice began again. More prolonged sounds were audible ... as it were moans ... always the same over and over again. Then apart from the rest the words began to stand out ... 'Roses ... roses ... roses....'

'Roses,' repeated Aratov in a whisper. 'Ah, yes! it's the roses I saw on that woman's head in the dream.'... 'Roses,' he heard again.

'Is that you?' Aratov asked in the same whisper. The voice suddenly ceased.

Aratov waited ... and waited, and dropped his head on the pillow. 'Hallucinations of hearing,' he thought. 'But if ... if she really were here, close at hand?... If I were to see her, should I be frightened? or glad? But what should I be frightened of? or glad of? Why, of this, to be sure; it would be a proof that there is another world, that the soul is immortal. Though, indeed, even if I did see something, it too might be a hallucination of the sight....'

He lighted the candle, however, and in a rapid glance, not without a certain dread, scanned the whole room ... and saw nothing in it unusual. He got up, went to the stereoscope ... again the same grey doll, with its eyes averted. The feeling of dread gave way to one of annoyance. He was, as it were, cheated in his expectations ... the very expectation indeed struck him as absurd.

'Well, this is positively idiotic!' he muttered, as he got back into bed, and blew out the candle. Profound darkness reigned once more.

Aratov resolved to go to sleep this time.... But a fresh sensation started up in him. He fancied some one was standing in the middle of the room, not far from him, and scarcely perceptibly breathing. He turned round hastily and opened his eyes.... But what could be seen in impenetrable darkness? He began to feel for a match on his little bedside table ... and suddenly it seemed to him that a sort of soft, noiseless hurricane was passing over the whole room, over him, through him, and the word 'I!' sounded distinctly in his ears....

'I!... I!'...

Some instants passed before he succeeded in getting the candle alight.

Again there was no one in the room; and he now heard nothing, except the uneven throbbing of his own heart. He drank a glass of water, and stayed still, his head resting on his hand. He was waiting.

He thought: 'I will wait. Either it's all nonsense ... or she is here. She is not going to play cat and mouse with me like this!' He waited, waited long ... so long that the hand on which he was resting his head went numb ... but not one of his previous sensations was repeated. Twice his eyes closed.... He opened them promptly ... at least he believed that he opened them. Gradually they turned towards the door and rested on it. The candle burned dim, and it was once more dark in the room ... but the door made a long streak of white in the half darkness. And now this patch began to move, to grow less, to disappear ... and in its place, in the doorway appeared a woman's figure. Aratov looked intently at it ... Clara! And this time she was looking straight at him, coming towards him.... On her head was a wreath of red roses.... He was all in agitation, he sat up....

Before him stood his aunt in a nightcap adorned with a broad red ribbon, and in a white dressing-jacket.

'Platosha!' he said with an effort. 'Is that you?'

'Yes, it's I,' answered Platonida Ivanovna ... 'I, Yasha darling, yes.'

'What have you come for?'

'You waked me up. At first you kept moaning as it were ... and then you cried out all of a sudden, "Save me! help me! "'

'I cried out?'

'Yes, and such a hoarse cry, "Save me!" I thought, Mercy on us! He's never ill, is he? And I came in. Are you quite well?'

'Perfectly well.'

'Well, you must have had a bad dream then. Would you like me to burn a little incense?'

Aratov once more stared intently at his aunt, and laughed aloud.... The figure of the good old lady in her nightcap and dressing-jacket, with her long face and scared expression, was certainly very comic. All the mystery surrounding him, oppressing him—everything weird was sent flying instantaneously.

'No, Platosha dear, there's no need,' he said. 'Please forgive me for unwittingly troubling you. Sleep well, and I will sleep too.'

Platonida Ivanovna remained a minute standing where she was, pointed to the candle, grumbled, 'Why not put it out ... an accident happens in a minute?' and as she went out, could not refrain, though only at a distance, from making the sign of the cross over him.

Aratov fell asleep quickly, and slept till morning. He even got up in a happy frame of mind ... though he felt sorry for something.... He felt light and free. 'What romantic fancies, if you come to think of it!' he said to himself with a smile. He never once glanced either at the stereoscope, or at the page torn out of the diary. Immediately after breakfast, however, he set off to go to Kupfer's.

What drew him there ... he was dimly aware.

XVI

Aratov found his sanguine friend at home. He chatted a little with him, reproached him for having quite forgotten his aunt and himself, listened to fresh praises of that heart of gold, the princess, who had just sent Kupfer from Yaroslav a smoking-cap embroidered with fish-scales ... and all at once, sitting just opposite Kupfer and looking him straight in the face, he announced that he had been a journey to Kazan.

'You have been to Kazan; what for?'

'Oh, I wanted to collect some facts about that ... Clara Militch.'

'The one that poisoned herself?'

'Yes.'

Kupfer shook his head. 'Well, you are a chap! And so quiet about it! Toiled a thousand miles out there and back ... for what? Eh? If there'd been some woman in the case now! Then I can understand anything! anything! any madness!' Kupfer ruffled up his hair. 'But simply to collect materials, as it's called among you learned people.... I'd rather be excused! There are statistical writers to do that job! Well, and did you make friends with the old lady and the sister? Isn't she a delightful girl?'

'Delightful,' answered Aratov, 'she gave me a great deal of interesting information.'

'Did she tell you exactly how Clara took poison?'

'You mean ... how?'

'Yes, in what manner?'

'No ... she was still in such grief ... I did not venture to question her too much. Was there anything remarkable about it?'

'To be sure there was. Only fancy; she had to appear on the stage that very day, and she acted her part. She took a glass of poison to the theatre with her, drank it before the first act, and went through all that act afterwards. With the poison inside her! Isn't that something like strength of will? Character, eh? And, they say, she never acted her part with such feeling, such passion! The public suspected nothing, they clapped, and called for her.... And directly the curtain fell, she dropped down there, on the stage. Convulsions ... and convulsions, and within an hour she was dead! But didn't I tell you all about it? And it was in the papers too!'

Aratov's hands had grown suddenly cold, and he felt an inward shiver.

'No, you didn't tell me that,' he said at last. 'And you don't know what play it was?

Kupfer thought a minute. 'I did hear what the play was ... there is a betrayed girl in it.... Some drama, it must have been. Clara was created for dramatic parts.... Her very appearance ... But where are you off to?' Kupfer interrupted himself, seeing that Aratov was reaching after his hat.

'I don't feel quite well,' replied Aratov. 'Good-bye ... I'll come in another time.'

Kupfer stopped him and looked into his face. 'What a nervous fellow you are, my boy! Just look at yourself.... You're as white as chalk.'

'I'm not well,' repeated Aratov, and, disengaging himself from Kupfer's detaining hands, he started homewards. Only at that instant it became clear to him that he had come to Kupfer with the sole object of talking of Clara...

'Unhappy Clara, poor frantic Clara....'

On reaching home, however, he quickly regained his composure to a certain degree.

The circumstances accompanying Clara's death had at first given him a violent shock ... but later on this performance 'with the poison inside her,' as Kupfer had expressed it, struck him as a kind of monstrous pose, a piece of bravado, and he was already trying not to think about it, fearing to arouse a feeling in himself, not unlike repugnance. And at dinner, as he sat facing Platosha, he suddenly recalled her midnight appearance, recalled that abbreviated dressing-jacket, the cap with the high ribbon—and why a ribbon on a nightcap?—all the ludicrous apparition which, like the scene-shifter's whistle in a transformation scene, had dissolved all his visions into dust! He even forced Platosha to repeat her description of how she had heard his scream, had been alarmed, had jumped up, could not for a minute find either his door or her own, and so on. In the evening he played a game of cards with her, and went off to his room rather depressed, but again fairly composed.

Aratov did not think about the approaching night, and was not afraid of it: he was sure he would pass an excellent night. The thought of Clara had sprung up within him from time to time; but he remembered at once how 'affectedly' she had killed herself, and turned away from it. This piece of 'bad taste' blocked out all other memories of her. Glancing cursorily into the stereoscope, he even fancied that she was averting her eyes because she was ashamed. Opposite the stereoscope on the wall hung a portrait of his mother. Aratov took it from its nail, scrutinised it a long while, kissed it and carefully put it away in a drawer. Why did he do that? Whether it was that it was not fitting for this portrait to be so close to that woman ... or for some other reason Aratov did not inquire of himself. But his mother's portrait stirred up memories of his father ... of his father, whom he had seen dying in this very room, in this bed. 'What do you think of all this, father?' he mentally addressed himself to him. 'You understand all this; you too believed in Schiller's world of spirits. Give me advice!'

'Father would have advised me to give up all this idiocy,' Aratov said aloud, and he took up a book. He could not, however, read for long, and feeling a sort of heaviness all over, he went to bed earlier than usual, in the full conviction that he would fall asleep at once.

And so it happened ... but his hopes of a quiet night were not realised.

XVII

It had not struck midnight, when he had an extraordinary and terrifying dream.

He dreamed that he was in a rich manor-house of which he was the owner. He had lately bought both the house and the estate attached to it. And he kept thinking, 'It's nice, very nice now, but evil is coming!' Beside him moved to and fro a little tiny man, his steward; he kept laughing, bowing, and trying to show Aratov how admirably everything was arranged in his house and his estate. 'This way, pray, this way, pray,' he kept repeating, chuckling at every word; 'kindly look how prosperous everything is with you! Look at the horses ... what splendid horses!' And Aratov saw a row of immense horses. They were standing in their stalls with their backs to him; their manes and tails were magnificent ... but as soon as Aratov went near, the horses' heads turned towards him, and they showed their teeth viciously. 'It's very nice,' Aratov thought! 'but evil is coming!' 'This way, pray, this way,' the steward repeated again, 'pray come into the garden: look what fine apples you have!' The apples certainly were fine, red, and round; but as soon as Aratov looked at them, they withered and fell ... 'Evil is coming,' he thought. 'And here is the lake,' lisped the steward, 'isn't it blue and smooth? And here's a little boat of gold ... will you get into it?... it floats of itself.' 'I won't get into it,' thought Aratov, 'evil is coming!' and for all that he got into the boat. At the bottom lay huddled up a little creature like a monkey; it was holding in its paws a glass full of a dark liquid. 'Pray don't be uneasy,' the steward shouted from the bank ... 'It's of no consequence! It's death! Good luck to you!' The boat darted swiftly along ... but all of a sudden a hurricane came swooping down on it, not like the hurricane of the night before, soft and noiseless—no; a black, awful, howling hurricane! Everything was confusion. And in the midst of the whirling darkness Aratov saw Clara in a stage-dress; she was lifting a glass to her lips, listening to shouts of 'Bravo! bravo!' in the distance, and some coarse voice shouted in Aratov's ear: 'Ah! did you think it would all end in a farce? No; it's a tragedy! a tragedy!'

Trembling all over, Aratov awoke. In the room it was not dark.... A faint light streamed in from somewhere, and showed every thing in the gloom and stillness. Aratov did not ask himself whence this light came.... He felt one thing only: Clara was there, in that room ... he felt her presence ... he was again and for ever in her power!

The cry broke from his lips, 'Clara, are you here?'

'Yes!' sounded distinctly in the midst of the lighted, still room.

Aratov inaudibly repeated his question....

'Yes!' he heard again.

'Then I want to see you!' he cried, and he jumped out of bed.

For some instants he stood in the same place, pressing his bare feet on the chill floor. His eyes strayed about. 'Where? where?' his lips were murmuring....

Nothing to be seen, not a sound to be heard.... He looked round him, and noticed that the faint light that filled the room came from a night-light, shaded by a sheet of paper and set in a corner, probably by Platosha while he was asleep. He even discerned the smell of incense ... also, most likely, the work of her hands.

He hurriedly dressed himself: to remain in bed, to sleep, was not to be thought of. Then he took his stand in the middle of the room, and folded his arms. The sense of Clara's presence was stronger in him than it had ever been.

And now he began to speak, not loudly, but with solemn deliberation, as though he were uttering an incantation.

'Clara,' he began, 'if you are truly here, if you see me, if you hear me—show yourself!... If the power which I feel over me is truly your power, show yourself! If you understand how bitterly I repent that I did not understand you, that I repelled you—show yourself! If what I have heard was truly your voice; if the feeling overmastering me is love; if you are now convinced that I love you, I, who till now have neither loved nor known any woman; if you know that since your death I have come to love you passionately, inconsolably; if you do not want me to go mad,—show yourself, Clara!'

Aratov had hardly uttered this last word, when all at once he felt that some one was swiftly approaching him from behind—as that day on the boulevard—and laying a hand on his shoulder. He turned round, and saw no one. But the sense of her presence had grown so distinct, so unmistakable, that once more he looked hurriedly about him....

What was that? On an easy-chair, two paces from him, sat a woman, all in black. Her head was turned away, as in the stereoscope.... It was she! It was Clara! But what a stern, sad face!

Aratov slowly sank on his knees. Yes; he was right, then. He felt neither fear nor delight, not even astonishment.... His heart even began to beat more quietly. He had one sense, one feeling, 'Ah! at last! at last!'

'Clara,' he began, in a faint but steady voice, 'why do you not look at me? I know that it is you ... but I may fancy my imagination has created an image like that one ... '—he pointed towards the stereoscope—'prove to me that it is you.... Turn to me, look at me, Clara!'

Clara's hand slowly rose ... and fell again.

'Clara! Clara! turn to me!'

And Clara's head slowly turned, her closed lids opened, and her dark eyes fastened upon Aratov.

He fell back a little, and uttered a single, long-drawn-out, trembling 'Ah!'

Clara gazed fixedly at him ... but her eyes, her features, retained their former mournfully stern, almost displeased expression. With just that expression on her face she had come on to the platform on the day of the literary matinee, before she caught sight of Aratov. And, just as then, she suddenly flushed, her face brightened, her eyes kindled, and a joyful, triumphant smile parted her lips....

'I have come!' cried Aratov. 'You have conquered.... Take me! I am yours, and you are mine!'

He flew to her; he tried to kiss those smiling, triumphant lips, and he kissed them. He felt their burning touch: he even felt the moist chill of her teeth: and a cry of triumph rang through the half-dark room.

Platonida Ivanovna, running in, found him in a swoon. He was on his knees; his head was lying on the arm-chair; his outstretched arms hung powerless; his pale face was radiant with the intoxication of boundless bliss.

Platonida Ivanovna fairly dropped to the ground beside him; she put her arms round him, faltered, 'Yasha! Yasha, darling! Yasha, dearest!' tried to lift him in her bony arms ... he did not stir. Then Platonida Ivanovna fell to screaming in a voice unlike her own. The servant ran in. Together they somehow roused him, began throwing water over him—even took it from the holy lamp before the holy picture....

He came to himself. But in response to his aunt's questions he only smiled, and with such an ecstatic face that she was more alarmed than ever, and kept crossing first herself and then him.... Aratov, at last, put aside her hand, and, still with the same ecstatic expression of face, said: 'Why, Platosha, what is the matter with you?'

'What is the matter with you, Yasha darling?'

'With me? I am happy ... happy, Platosha ... that's what's the matter with me. And now I want to lie down, to sleep....' He tried to get up, but felt such a sense of weakness in his legs, and in his whole body, that he could not, without the help of his aunt and the servant, undress and get into bed. But he fell asleep very quickly, still with the same look of blissful triumph on his face. Only his face was very pale.

XVIII

When Platonida Ivanovna came in to him next morning, he was still in the same position ... but the weakness had not passed off, and he actually preferred to remain in bed. Platonida Ivanovna did not like the pallor of his face at all. 'Lord, have mercy on us! what is it?' she thought; 'not a drop of blood in his face, refuses broth, lies there and smiles, and keeps declaring he's perfectly well!' He refused breakfast too. 'What is the matter with you, Yasha?' she questioned him; 'do you mean to lie in bed all day?' 'And what if I did?' Aratov answered gently. This very gentleness again Platonida Ivanovna did not like at all. Aratov had the air of a man who has discovered a great, very delightful secret, and is jealously guarding it and keeping it to himself. He was looking forward to the night, not impatiently, but with curiosity. 'What next?' he was asking himself; 'what will happen?' Astonishment, incredulity, he had ceased to feel; he did not doubt that he was in communication with Clara, that they loved one another ... that, too, he had no doubt about. Only ... what could come of such love? He recalled that kiss ... and a delicious shiver ran swiftly and sweetly through all his limbs. 'Such a kiss,' was his thought, 'even Romeo and Juliet knew not! But next time I will be stronger.... I will master her.... She shall come with a wreath of tiny roses in her dark curls....

'But what next? We cannot live together, can we? Then must I die so as to be with her? Is it not for that she has come; and is it not so she means to take me captive?

'Well; what then? If I must die, let me die. Death has no terrors for me now. It cannot, then, annihilate me? On the contrary, only thus and there can I be happy ... as I have not been happy in life, as she has not.... We are both pure! Oh, that kiss!'

* * * * *

Platonida Ivanovna was incessantly coming into Aratov's room. She did not worry him with questions; she merely looked at him, muttered, sighed, and went out again. But he refused his dinner too: this was really too dreadful. The old lady set off to an acquaintance of hers, a district doctor, in whom she placed some confidence, simply because he did not drink and had a German wife. Aratov was surprised when she brought him in to see him; but Platonida Ivanovna so earnestly implored her darling Yashenka to allow Paramon Paramonitch (that was the doctor's name) to examine him—if only for her sake—that Aratov consented. Paramon Paramonitch felt his pulse, looked at his tongue, asked a question, and announced at last that it was absolutely necessary for him to 'auscultate' him. Aratov was in such an amiable frame of mind that he agreed to this too. The doctor delicately uncovered his chest, delicately tapped, listened, hummed and hawed, prescribed some drops and a mixture, and, above all, advised him to keep quiet and avoid any excitement. 'I dare say!' thought Aratov; 'that idea's a little too late, my good friend!' 'What is wrong with Yasha?' queried Platonida Ivanovna, as she slipped a three-rouble note into Paramon Paramonitch's hand in the doorway. The district doctor, who like all modern physicians—especially those who wear a government uniform—was fond of showing off with scientific terms, announced that her nephew's diagnosis showed all the symptoms of neurotic cardialgia, and there were febrile symptoms also. 'Speak plainer, my dear sir; do,' cut in Platonida Ivanovna; 'don't terrify me with your Latin; you're not in your surgery!' 'His heart's not right,' the doctor explained; 'and, well—there's a little fever too' ... and he repeated his advice as to perfect quiet and absence of excitement. 'But there's no danger, is there?' Platonida Ivanovna inquired severely ('You dare rush off into Latin again,' she implied.) 'No need to anticipate any at present!'

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.



PHANTOMS

'One instant ... and the fairy tale is over, And once again the actual fills the soul ...'—A. FET.

I

For a long time I could not get to sleep, and kept turning from side to side. 'Confound this foolishness about table-turning!' I thought. 'It simply upsets one's nerves.'... Drowsiness began to overtake me at last....

Suddenly it seemed to me as though there were the faint and plaintive sound of a harp-string in the room.

I raised my head. The moon was low in the sky, and looked me straight in the face. White as chalk lay its light upon the floor.... The strange sound was distinctly repeated.

I leaned on my elbow. A faint feeling of awe plucked at my heart. A minute passed, another.... Somewhere, far away, a cock crowed; another answered still more remote.

I let my head sink back on the pillow. 'See what one can work oneself up to,' I thought again,... 'there's a singing in my ears.'

After a little while I fell asleep—or I thought I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed—and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound.... I turned over.... The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above.... Before me; impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless.

'Who are you?' I asked with an effort.

A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves: 'It is I ... I ... I ... I have come for you.'

'For me? But who are you?'

'Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak-tree. I will be there.'

I tried to look closely into the face of the mysterious woman—and suddenly I gave an involuntary shudder: there was a chilly breath upon me. And then I was not lying down, but sitting up in my bed; and where, as I fancied, the phantom had stood, the moonlight lay in a long streak of white upon the floor.

II

The day passed somehow. I tried, I remember, to read, to work ... everything was a failure. The night came. My heart was throbbing within me, as though it expected something. I lay down, and turned with my face to the wall.

'Why did you not come?' sounded a distinct whisper in the room.

I looked round quickly.

Again she ... again the mysterious phantom. Motionless eyes in a motionless face, and a gaze full of sadness.

'Come!' I heard the whisper again.

'I will come,' I replied with instinctive horror. The phantom bent slowly forward, and undulating faintly like smoke, melted away altogether. And again the moon shone white and untroubled on the smooth floor.

III

I passed the day in unrest. At supper I drank almost a whole bottle of wine, and all but went out on to the steps; but I turned back and flung myself into my bed. My blood was pulsing painfully.

Again the sound was heard.... I started, but did not look round. All at once I felt that some one had tight hold of me from behind, and was whispering in my very ear: 'Come, come, come.'... Trembling with terror, I moaned out: 'I will come!' and sat up.

A woman stood stooping close to my very pillow. She smiled dimly and vanished. I had time, though, to make out her face. It seemed to me I had seen her before—but where, when? I got up late, and spent the whole day wandering about the country. I went to the old oak at the edge of the forest, and looked carefully all around.

Towards evening I sat at the open window in my study. My old housekeeper set a cup of tea before me, but I did not touch it.... I kept asking myself in bewilderment: 'Am not I going out of my mind?' The sun had just set: and not the sky alone was flushed with red; the whole atmosphere was suddenly filled with an almost unnatural purple. The leaves and grass never stirred, stiff as though freshly coated with varnish. In their stony rigidity, in the vivid sharpness of their outlines, in this combination of intense brightness and death-like stillness, there was something weird and mysterious. A rather large grey bird suddenly flew up without a sound and settled on the very window sill.... I looked at it, and it looked at me sideways with its round, dark eye. 'Were you sent to remind me, then?' I wondered.

At once the bird fluttered its soft wings, and without a sound—as before—flew away. I sat a long time still at the window, but I was no longer a prey to uncertainty. I had, as it were, come within the enchanted circle, and I was borne along by an irresistible though gentle force, as a boat is borne along by the current long before it reaches the waterfall. I started up at last. The purple had long vanished from the air, the colours were darkened, and the enchanted silence was broken. There was the flutter of a gust of wind, the moon came out brighter and brighter in the sky that was growing bluer, and soon the leaves of the trees were weaving patterns of black and silver in her cold beams. My old housekeeper came into the study with a lighted candle, but there was a draught from the window and the flame went out. I could restrain myself no longer. I jumped up, clapped on my cap, and set off to the corner of the forest, to the old oak-tree.

IV

This oak had, many years before, been struck by lightning; the top of the tree had been shattered, and was withered up, but there was still life left in it for centuries to come. As I was coming up to it, a cloud passed over the moon: it was very dark under its thick branches. At first I noticed nothing special; but I glanced on one side, and my heart fairly failed me—a white figure was standing motionless beside a tall bush between the oak and the forest. My hair stood upright on my head, but I plucked up my courage and went towards the forest.

Yes, it was she, my visitor of the night. As I approached her, the moon shone out again. She seemed all, as it were, spun out of half-transparent, milky mist,—through her face I could see a branch faintly stirring in the wind; only the hair and eyes were a little dark, and on one of the fingers of her clasped hands a slender ring shone with a gleam of pale gold. I stood still before her, and tried to speak; but the voice died away in my throat, though it was no longer fear exactly I felt. Her eyes were turned upon me; their gaze expressed neither distress nor delight, but a sort of lifeless attention. I waited to see whether she would utter a word, but she remained motionless and speechless, and still gazed at me with her deathly intent eyes. Dread came over me again.

'I have come!' I cried at last with an effort. My voice sounded muffled and strange to me.

'I love you,' I heard her whisper.

'You love me!' I repeated in amazement.

'Give yourself up to me, 'was whispered me again in reply.

'Give myself up to you! But you are a phantom; you have no body even.' A strange animation came upon me. 'What are you—smoke, air, vapour? Give myself up to you! Answer me first, Who are you? Have you lived upon the earth? Whence have you come?'

'Give yourself up to me. I will do you no harm. Only say two words: "Take me."'

I looked at her. 'What is she saying?' I thought. 'What does it all mean? And how can she take me? Shall I try?'

'Very well,' I said, and unexpectedly loudly, as though some one had given me a push from behind; 'take me!'

I had hardly uttered these words when the mysterious figure, with a sort of inward laugh, which set her face quivering for an instant, bent forward, and stretched out her arms wide apart.... I tried to dart away, but I was already in her power. She seized me, my body rose a foot from the ground, and we both floated smoothly and not too swiftly over the wet, still grass.

V

At first I felt giddy, and instinctively I closed my eyes.... A minute later I opened them again. We were floating as before; but the forest was now nowhere to be seen. Under us stretched a plain, spotted here and there with dark patches. With horror I felt that we had risen to a fearful height.

'I am lost; I am in the power of Satan,' flashed through me like lightning. Till that instant the idea of a temptation of the evil one, of the possibility of perdition, had never entered my head. We still whirled on, and seemed to be mounting higher and higher.

'Where will you take me?' I moaned at last.

'Where you like,' my companion answered. She clung close to me; her face was almost resting upon my face. But I was scarcely conscious of her touch.

'Let me sink down to the earth, I am giddy at this height.'

'Very well; only shut your eyes and hold your breath.'

I obeyed, and at once felt that I was falling like a stone flung from the hand ... the air whistled in my ears. When I could think again, we were floating smoothly once more just above the earth, so that we caught our feet in the tops of the tall grass.

'Put me on my feet,' I began. 'What pleasure is there in flying? I'm not a bird.'

'I thought you would like it. We have no other pastime.'

'You? Then what are you?'

There was no answer.

'You don't dare to tell me that?'

The plaintive sound which had awakened me the first night quivered in my ears. Meanwhile we were still, scarcely perceptibly, moving in the damp night air.

'Let me go!' I said. My companion moved slowly away, and I found myself on my feet. She stopped before me and again folded her hands. I grew more composed and looked into her face; as before it expressed submissive sadness.

'Where are we?' I asked. I did not recognise the country about me.

'Far from your home, but you can be there in an instant.'

'How can that be done? by trusting myself to you again?'

'I have done you no harm and will do you none. Let us fly till dawn, that is all. I can bear you away wherever you fancy—to the ends of the earth. Give yourself up to me! Say only: "Take me!"'

'Well ... take me!'

She again pressed close to me, again my feet left the earth—and we were flying.

VI

'Which way?' she asked me.

'Straight on, keep straight on.'

'But here is a forest.'

'Lift us over the forest, only slower.'

We darted upwards like a wild snipe flying up into a birch-tree, and again flew on in a straight line. Instead of grass, we caught glimpses of tree-tops just under our feet. It was strange to see the forest from above, its bristling back lighted up by the moon. It looked like some huge slumbering wild beast, and accompanied us with a vast unceasing murmur, like some inarticulate roar. In one place we crossed a small glade; intensely black was the jagged streak of shadow along one side of it. Now and then there was the plaintive cry of a hare below us; above us the owl hooted, plaintively too; there was a scent in the air of mushrooms, buds, and dawn-flowers; the moon fairly flooded everything on all sides with its cold, hard light; the Pleiades gleamed just over our heads. And now the forest was left behind; a streak of fog stretched out across the open country; it was the river. We flew along one of its banks, above the bushes, still and weighed down with moisture. The river's waters at one moment glimmered with a flash of blue, at another flowed on in darkness, as it were, in wrath. Here and there a delicate mist moved strangely over the water, and the water-lilies' cups shone white in maiden pomp with every petal open to its full, as though they knew their safety out of reach. I longed to pick one of them, and behold, I found myself at once on the river's surface.... The damp air struck me an angry blow in the face, just as I broke the thick stalk of a great flower. We began to fly across from bank to bank, like the water-fowl we were continually waking up and chasing before us. More than once we chanced to swoop down on a family of wild ducks, settled in a circle on an open spot among the reeds, but they did not stir; at most one of them would thrust out its neck from under its wing, stare at us, and anxiously poke its beak away again in its fluffy feathers, and another faintly quacked, while its body twitched a little all over. We startled one heron; it flew up out of a willow bush, brandishing its legs and fluttering its wings with clumsy eagerness: it struck me as remarkably like a German. There was not the splash of a fish to be heard, they too were asleep. I began to get used to the sensation of flying, and even to find a pleasure in it; any one will understand me, who has experienced flying in dreams. I proceeded to scrutinise with close attention the strange being, by whose good offices such unlikely adventures had befallen me.

VII

She was a woman with a small un-Russian face. Greyish-white, half-transparent, with scarcely marked shades, she reminded one of the alabaster figures on a vase lighted up within, and again her face seemed familiar to me.

'Can I speak with you?' I asked.

'Speak.'

'I see a ring on your finger; you have lived then on the earth, you have been married?'

I waited ... There was no answer.

'What is your name, or, at least, what was it?'

'Call me Alice.'

'Alice! That's an English name! Are you an Englishwoman? Did you know me in former days?'

'No.'

'Why is it then you have come to me?'

'I love you.'

'And are you content?'

'Yes; we float, we whirl together in the fresh air.'

'Alice!' I said all at once, 'you are perhaps a sinful, condemned soul?'

My companion's head bent towards me. 'I don't understand you,' she murmured.

'I adjure you in God's name....' I was beginning.

'What are you saying?' she put in in perplexity. 'I don't understand.'

I fancied that the arm that lay like a chilly girdle about my waist softly trembled....

'Don't be afraid,' said Alice, 'don't be afraid, my dear one!' Her face turned and moved towards my face.... I felt on my lips a strange sensation, like the faintest prick of a soft and delicate sting.... Leeches might prick so in mild and drowsy mood.

VIII

I glanced downwards. We had now risen again to a considerable height. We were flying over some provincial town I did not know, situated on the side of a wide slope. Churches rose up high among the dark mass of wooden roofs and orchards; a long bridge stood out black at the bend of a river; everything was hushed, buried in slumber. The very crosses and cupolas seemed to gleam with a silent brilliance; silently stood the tall posts of the wells beside the round tops of the willows; silently the straight whitish road darted arrow-like into one end of the town, and silently it ran out again at the opposite end on to the dark waste of monotonous fields.

'What town is this?' I asked.

'X....'

'X ... in Y ... province?'

'Yes.'

'I'm a long distance indeed from home!'

'Distance is not for us.'

'Really?' I was fired by a sudden recklessness. 'Then take me to South America!

'To America I cannot. It's daylight there by now.' 'And we are night-birds. Well, anywhere, where you can, only far, far away.'

'Shut your eyes and hold your breath,' answered Alice, and we flew along with the speed of a whirlwind. With a deafening noise the air rushed into my ears. We stopped, but the noise did not cease. On the contrary, it changed into a sort of menacing roar, the roll of thunder...

'Now you can open your eyes,' said Alice.

IX

I obeyed ... Good God, where was I?

Overhead, ponderous, smoke-like storm-clouds; they huddled, they moved on like a herd of furious monsters ... and there below, another monster; a raging, yes, raging, sea ... The white foam gleamed with spasmodic fury, and surged up in hillocks upon it, and hurling up shaggy billows, it beat with a sullen roar against a huge cliff, black as pitch. The howling of the tempest, the chilling gasp of the storm-rocked abyss, the weighty splash of the breakers, in which from time to time one fancied something like a wail, like distant cannon-shots, like a bell ringing—the tearing crunch and grind of the shingle on the beach, the sudden shriek of an unseen gull, on the murky horizon the disabled hulk of a ship—on every side death, death and horror.... Giddiness overcame me, and I shut my eyes again with a sinking heart....

'What is this? Where are we?'

'On the south coast of the Isle of Wight opposite the Blackgang cliff where ships are so often wrecked,' said Alice, speaking this time with peculiar distinctness, and as it seemed to me with a certain malignant pleasure....

'Take me away, away from here ... home! home!' I shrank up, hid my face in my hands ... I felt that we were moving faster than before; the wind now was not roaring or moaning, it whistled in my hair, in my clothes ... I caught my breath ...

'Stand on your feet now,' I heard Alice's voice saying. I tried to master myself, to regain consciousness ... I felt the earth under the soles of my feet, and I heard nothing, as though everything had swooned away about me ... only in my temples the blood throbbed irregularly, and my head was still giddy with a faint ringing in my ears. I drew myself up and opened my eyes.

X

We were on the bank of my pond. Straight before me there were glimpses through the pointed leaves of the willows of its broad surface with threads of fluffy mist clinging here and there upon it. To the right a field of rye shone dimly; on the left stood up my orchard trees, tall, rigid, drenched it seemed in dew ... The breath of the morning was already upon them. Across the pure grey sky stretched like streaks of smoke, two or three slanting clouds; they had a yellowish tinge, the first faint glow of dawn fell on them; one could not say whence it came; the eye could not detect on the horizon, which was gradually growing lighter, the spot where the sun was to rise. The stars had disappeared; nothing was astir yet, though everything was already on the point of awakening in the enchanted stillness of the morning twilight.

'Morning! see, it is morning!' cried Alice in my ear. 'Farewell till to-morrow.'

I turned round ... Lightly rising from the earth, she floated by, and suddenly she raised both hands above her head. The head and hands and shoulders glowed for an instant with warm, corporeal light; living sparks gleamed in the dark eyes; a smile of mysterious tenderness stirred the reddening lips.... A lovely woman had suddenly arisen before me.... But as though dropping into a swoon, she fell back instantly and melted away like vapour.

I remained passive.

When I recovered myself and looked round me, it seemed to me that the corporeal, pale-rosy colour that had flitted over the figure of my phantom had not yet vanished, and was enfolding me, diffused in the air.... It was the flush of dawn. All at once I was conscious of extreme fatigue and turned homewards. As I passed the poultry-yard, I heard the first morning cackling of the geese (no birds wake earlier than they do); along the roof at the end of each beam sat a rook, and they were all busily and silently pluming themselves, standing out in sharp outline against the milky sky. From time to time they all rose at once, and after a short flight, settled again in a row, without uttering a caw.... From the wood close by came twice repeated the drowsy, fresh chuck-chuck of the black-cock, beginning to fly into the dewy grass, overgrown by brambles.... With a faint tremor all over me I made my way to my bed, and soon fell into a sound sleep.

XI

The next night, as I was approaching the old oak, Alice moved to meet me, as if I were an old friend. I was not afraid of her as I had been the day before, I was almost rejoiced at seeing her; I did not even attempt to comprehend what was happening to me; I was simply longing to fly farther to interesting places.

Alice's arm again twined about me, and we took flight again.

'Let us go to Italy,' I whispered in her ear.

'Wherever you wish, my dear one,' she answered solemnly and slowly, and slowly and solemnly she turned her face towards me. It struck me as less transparent than on the eve; more womanlike and more imposing; it recalled to me the being I had had a glimpse of in the early dawn at parting.

'This night is a great night,' Alice went on. 'It comes rarely—when seven times thirteen ...'

At this point I could not catch a few words.

'To-night we can see what is hidden at other times.'

'Alice!' I implored, 'but who are you, tell me at last?'

Silently she lifted her long white hand. In the dark sky, where her finger was pointing, a comet flashed, a reddish streak among the tiny stars.

'How am I to understand you?' I began, 'Or, as that comet floats between the planets and the sun, do you float among men ... or what?'

But Alice's hand was suddenly passed before my eyes.... It was as though a white mist from the damp valley had fallen on me....

'To Italy! to Italy!' I heard her whisper. 'This night is a great night!'

XII

The mist cleared away from before my eyes, and I saw below me an immense plain. But already, by the mere breath of the warm soft air upon my cheeks, I could tell I was not in Russia; and the plain, too, was not like our Russian plains. It was a vast dark expanse, apparently desert and not overgrown with grass; here and there over its whole extent gleamed pools of water, like broken pieces of looking-glass; in the distance could be dimly descried a noiseless motionless sea. Great stars shone bright in the spaces between the big beautiful clouds; the murmur of thousands, subdued but never-ceasing, rose on all sides, and very strange was this shrill but drowsy chorus, this voice of the darkness and the desert....

'The Pontine marshes,' said Alice. 'Do you hear the frogs? do you smell the sulphur?'

'The Pontine marshes....' I repeated, and a sense of grandeur and of desolation came upon me. 'But why have you brought me here, to this gloomy forsaken place? Let us fly to Rome instead.'

'Rome is near,' answered Alice.... 'Prepare yourself!'

We sank lower, and flew along an ancient Roman road. A bullock slowly lifted from the slimy mud its shaggy monstrous head, with short tufts of bristles between its crooked backward-bent horns. It turned the whites of its dull malignant eyes askance, and sniffed a heavy snorting breath into its wet nostrils, as though scenting us.

'Rome, Rome is near...' whispered Alice. 'Look, look in front....'

I raised my eyes.

What was the blur of black on the edge of the night sky? Were these the lofty arches of an immense bridge? What river did it span? Why was it broken down in parts? No, it was not a bridge, it was an ancient aqueduct. All around was the holy ground of the Campagna, and there, in the distance, the Albanian hills, and their peaks and the grey ridge of the old aqueduct gleamed dimly in the beams of the rising moon....

We suddenly darted upwards, and floated in the air before a deserted ruin. No one could have said what it had been: sepulchre, palace, or castle.... Dark ivy encircled it all over in its deadly clasp, and below gaped yawning a half-ruined vault. A heavy underground smell rose in my face from this heap of tiny closely-fitted stones, whence the granite facing of the wall had long crumbled away.

'Here,' Alice pronounced, and she raised her hand: 'Here! call aloud three times running the name of the mighty Roman!'

'What will happen?'

'You will see.'

I wondered. 'Divus Caius Julius Caesar!' I cried suddenly; 'Divus Caius Julius Caesar!' I repeated deliberately; 'Caesar!'

XIII

The last echoes of my voice had hardly died away, when I heard....

It is difficult to say what I did hear. At first there reached me a confused din the ear could scarcely catch, the endlessly-repeated clamour of the blare of trumpets, and the clapping of hands. It seemed that somewhere, immensely far away, at some fathomless depth, a multitude innumerable was suddenly astir, and was rising up, rising up in agitation, calling to one another, faintly, as if muffled in sleep, the suffocating sleep of ages. Then the air began moving in dark currents over the ruin.... Shades began flitting before me, myriads of shades, millions of outlines, the rounded curves of helmets, the long straight lines of lances; the moonbeams were broken into momentary gleams of blue upon these helmets and lances, and all this army, this multitude, came closer and closer, and grew, in more and more rapid movement.... An indescribable force, a force fit to set the whole world moving, could be felt in it; but not one figure stood out clearly.... And suddenly I fancied a sort of tremor ran all round, as if it were the rush and rolling apart of some huge waves.... 'Caesar, Caesar venit!' sounded voices, like the leaves of a forest when a storm has suddenly broken upon it ... a muffled shout thundered through the multitude, and a pale stern head, in a wreath of laurel, with downcast eyelids, the head of the emperor, began slowly to rise out of the ruin....

There is no word in the tongue of man to express the horror which clutched at my heart.... I felt that were that head to raise its eyes, to part its lips, I must perish on the spot! 'Alice!' I moaned, 'I won't, I can't, I don't want Rome, coarse, terrible Rome.... Away, away from here!'

'Coward!' she whispered, and away we flew. I just had time to hear behind me the iron voice of the legions, like a peal of thunder ... then all was darkness.

XIV

'Look round,' Alice said to me, 'and don't fear.'

I obeyed—and, I remember, my first impression was so sweet that I could only sigh. A sort of smoky-grey, silvery-soft, half-light, half-mist, enveloped me on all sides. At first I made out nothing: I was dazzled by this azure brilliance; but little by little began to emerge the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests; a lake lay at my feet, with stars quivering in its depths, and the musical plash of waves. The fragrance of orange flowers met me with a rush, and with it—and also as it were with a rush—came floating the pure powerful notes of a woman's young voice. This fragrance, this music, fairly drew me downwards, and I began to sink ... to sink down towards a magnificent marble palace, which stood, invitingly white, in the midst of a wood of cypress. The music flowed out from its wide open windows, the waves of the lake, flecked with the pollen of flowers, splashed upon its walls, and just opposite, all clothed in the dark green of orange flowers and laurels, enveloped in shining mist, and studded with statues, slender columns, and the porticoes of temples, a lofty round island rose out of the water....

'Isola Bella!' said Alice.... 'Lago Maggiore....'

I murmured only 'Ah!' and continued to drop. The woman's voice sounded louder and clearer in the palace; I was irresistibly drawn towards it.... I wanted to look at the face of the singer, who, in such music, gave voice to such a night. We stood still before the window.

In the centre of a room, furnished in the style of Pompeii, and more like an ancient temple than a modern drawing-room, surrounded by Greek statues, Etruscan vases, rare plants, and precious stuffs, lighted up by the soft radiance of two lamps enclosed in crystal globes, a young woman was sitting at the piano. Her head slightly bowed and her eyes half-closed, she sang an Italian melody; she sang and smiled, and at the same time her face wore an expression of gravity, almost of sternness ... a token of perfect rapture! She smiled ... and Praxiteles' Faun, indolent, youthful as she, effeminate, and voluptuous, seemed to smile back at her from a corner, under the branches of an oleander, across the delicate smoke that curled upwards from a bronze censer on an antique tripod. The beautiful singer was alone. Spell-bound by the music, her beauty, the splendour and sweet fragrance of the night, moved to the heart by the picture of this youthful, serene, and untroubled happiness, I utterly forgot my companion, I forgot the strange way in which I had become a witness of this life, so remote, so completely apart from me, and I was on the point of tapping at the window, of speaking....

I was set trembling all over by a violent shock—just as though I had touched a galvanic battery. I looked round.... The face of Alice was—for all its transparency—dark and menacing; there was a dull glow of anger in her eyes, which were suddenly wide and round....

'Away!' she murmured wrathfully, and again whirling and darkness and giddiness.... Only this time not the shout of legions, but the voice of the singer, breaking on a high note, lingered in my ears....

We stopped. The high note, the same note was still ringing and did not cease to ring in my ears, though I was breathing quite a different air, a different scent ... a breeze was blowing upon me, fresh and invigorating, as though from a great river, and there was a smell of hay, smoke and hemp. The long-drawn-out note was followed by a second, and a third, but with an expression so unmistakable, a trill so familiar, so peculiarly our own, that I said to myself at once: 'That's a Russian singing a Russian song!' and at that very instant everything grew clear about me.

XV

We found ourselves on a flat riverside plain. To the left, newly-mown meadows, with rows of huge hayricks, stretched endlessly till they were lost in the distance; to the right extended the smooth surface of a vast mighty river, till it too was lost in the distance. Not far from the bank, big dark barges slowly rocked at anchor, slightly tilting their slender masts, like pointing fingers. From one of these barges came floating up to me the sounds of a liquid voice, and a fire was burning in it, throwing a long red light that danced and quivered on the water. Here and there, both on the river and in the fields, other lights were glimmering, whether close at hand or far away, the eye could not distinguish; they shrank together, then suddenly lengthened out into great blurs of light; grasshoppers innumerable kept up an unceasing churr, persistent as the frogs of the Pontine marshes; and across the cloudless, but dark lowering sky floated from time to time the cries of unseen birds.

'Are we in Russia?' I asked of Alice.

'It is the Volga,' she answered.

We flew along the river-bank. 'Why did you tear me away from there, from that lovely country?' I began. 'Were you envious, or was it jealousy in you?'

The lips of Alice faintly stirred, and again there was a menacing light in her eyes.... But her whole face grew stony again at once.

'I want to go home,' I said.

'Wait a little, wait a little,' answered Alice. 'To-night is a great night. It will not soon return. You may be a spectator.... Wait a little.'

And we suddenly flew across the Volga in a slanting direction, keeping close to the water's surface, with the low impetuous flight of swallows before a storm. The broad waves murmured heavily below us, the sharp river breeze beat upon us with its strong cold wing ... the high right bank began soon to rise up before us in the half-darkness. Steep mountains appeared with great ravines between. We came near to them.

'Shout: "Lads, to the barges!"' Alice whispered to me. I remembered the terror I had suffered at the apparition of the Roman phantoms. I felt weary and strangely heavy, as though my heart were ebbing away within me. I wished not to utter the fatal words; I knew beforehand that in response to them there would appear, as in the wolves' valley of the Freischuetz, some monstrous thing; but my lips parted against my will, and in a weak forced voice I shouted, also against my will: 'Lads, to the barges!'

XVI

At first all was silence, even as it was at the Roman ruins, but suddenly I heard close to my very ear a coarse bargeman's laugh, and with a moan something dropped into the water and a gurgling sound followed.... I looked round: no one was anywhere to be seen, but from the bank the echo came bounding back, and at once from all sides rose a deafening din. There was a medley of everything in this chaos of sound: shouting and whining, furious abuse and laughter, laughter above everything; the plash of oars and the cleaving of hatchets, a crash as of the smashing of doors and chests, the grating of rigging and wheels, and the neighing of horses, and the clang of the alarm bell and the clink of chains, the roar and crackle of fire, drunken songs and quick, gnashing chatter, weeping inconsolable, plaintive despairing prayers, and shouts of command, the dying gasp and the reckless whistle, the guffaw and the thud of the dance.... 'Kill them! Hang them! Drown them! rip them up! bravo! bravo! don't spare them!' could be heard distinctly; I could even hear the hurried breathing of men panting. And meanwhile all around, as far as the eye could reach, nothing could be seen, nothing was changed; the river rolled by mysteriously, almost sullenly, the very bank seemed more deserted and desolate—and that was all.

I turned to Alice, but she put her finger to her lips....

'Stepan Timofeitch! Stepan Timofeitch is coming!' was shouted noisily all round; 'he is coming, our father, our ataman, our bread-giver!' As before I saw nothing but it seemed to me as though a huge body were moving straight at me.... 'Frolka! where art thou, dog?' thundered an awful voice. 'Set fire to every corner at once—and to the hatchet with them, the white-handed scoundrels!'

I felt the hot breath of the flame close by, and tasted the bitter savour of the smoke; and at the same instant something warm like blood spurted over my face and hands.... A savage roar of laughter broke out all round....

I lost consciousness, and when I came to myself, Alice and I were gliding along beside the familiar bushes that bordered my wood, straight towards the old oak....

'Do you see the little path?' Alice said to me, 'where the moon shines dimly and where are two birch-trees overhanging? Will you go there?'

But I felt so shattered and exhausted that I could only say in reply: 'Home! home!'

'You are at home,' replied Alice.

I was in fact standing at the very door of my house—alone. Alice had vanished. The yard-dog was about to approach, he scanned me suspiciously—and with a bark ran away.

With difficulty I dragged myself up to my bed and fell asleep without undressing.

XVII

All the following morning my head ached, and I could scarcely move my legs; but I cared little for my bodily discomfort; I was devoured by regret, overwhelmed with vexation.

I was excessively annoyed with myself. 'Coward!' I repeated incessantly; 'yes—Alice was right. What was I frightened of? how could I miss such an opportunity?... I might have seen Caesar himself—and I was senseless with terror, I whimpered and turned away, like a child at the sight of the rod. Razin, now—that's another matter. As a nobleman and landowner ... though, indeed, even then what had I really to fear? Coward! coward!'...

'But wasn't it all a dream?' I asked myself at last. I called my housekeeper.

'Marfa, what o'clock did I go to bed yesterday—do you remember?'

'Why, who can tell, master?... Late enough, surely. Before it was quite dark you went out of the house; and you were tramping about in your bedroom when the night was more than half over. Just on morning—yes. And this is the third day it's been the same. You've something on your mind, it's easy to see.'

'Aha-ha!' I thought. 'Then there's no doubt about the flying. Well, and how do I look to-day?' I added aloud.

'How do you look? Let me have a look at you. You've got thinner a bit. Yes, and you're pale, master; to be sure, there's not a drop of blood in your face.'

I felt a slight twinge of uneasiness.... I dismissed Marfa.

'Why, going on like this, you'll die, or go out of your mind, perhaps,' I reasoned with myself, as I sat deep in thought at the window. 'I must give it all up. It's dangerous. And now my heart beats so strangely. And when I fly, I keep feeling as though some one were sucking at it, or as it were drawing something out of it—as the spring sap is drawn out of the birch-tree, if you stick an axe into it. I'm sorry, though. And Alice too.... She is playing cat and mouse with me ... still she can hardly wish me harm. I will give myself up to her for the last time—and then.... But if she is drinking my blood? That's awful. Besides, such rapid locomotion cannot fail to be injurious; even in England, I'm told, on the railways, it's against the law to go more than one hundred miles an hour....'

So I reasoned with myself—but at ten o'clock in the evening, I was already at my post before the old oak-tree.

XVIII

The night was cold, dull, grey; there was a feeling of rain in the air. To my amazement, I found no one under the oak; I walked several times round it, went up to the edge of the wood, turned back again, peered anxiously into the darkness.... All was emptiness. I waited a little, then several times I uttered the name, Alice, each time a little louder,... but she did not appear. I felt sad, almost sick at heart; my previous apprehensions vanished; I could not resign myself to the idea that my companion would not come back to me again.

'Alice! Alice! come! Can it be you will not come?' I shouted, for the last time.

A crow, who had been waked by my voice, suddenly darted upwards into a tree-top close by, and catching in the twigs, fluttered his wings.... But Alice did not appear.

With downcast head, I turned homewards. Already I could discern the black outlines of the willows on the pond's edge, and the light in my window peeped out at me through the apple-trees in the orchard—peeped at me, and hid again, like the eye of some man keeping watch on me—when suddenly I heard behind me the faint swish of the rapidly parted air, and something at once embraced and snatched me upward, as a buzzard pounces on and snatches up a quail.... It was Alice sweeping down upon me. I felt her cheek against my cheek, her enfolding arm about my body, and like a cutting cold her whisper pierced to my ear, 'Here I am.' I was frightened and delighted both at once.... We flew at no great height above the ground.

'You did not mean to come to-day?' I said.

'And you were dull without me? You love me? Oh, you are mine!'

The last words of Alice confused me.... I did not know what to say.

'I was kept,' she went on; 'I was watched.'

'Who could keep you?'

'Where would you like to go?' inquired Alice, as usual not answering my question.

'Take me to Italy—to that lake, you remember.'

Alice turned a little away, and shook her head in refusal. At that point I noticed for the first time that she had ceased to be transparent. And her face seemed tinged with colour; there was a faint glow of red over its misty whiteness. I glanced at her eyes ... and felt a pang of dread; in those eyes something was astir—with the slow, continuous, malignant movement of the benumbed snake, twisting and turning as the sun begins to thaw it.

'Alice,' I cried, 'who are you? Tell me who you are.'

Alice simply shrugged her shoulders.

I felt angry ... I longed to punish her; and suddenly the idea occurred to me to tell her to fly with me to Paris. 'That's the place for you to be jealous,' I thought. 'Alice,' I said aloud, 'you are not afraid of big towns—Paris, for instance?'

'No.'

'Not even those parts where it is as light as in the boulevards?'

'It is not the light of day.'

'Good; then take me at once to the Boulevard des Italiens.'

Alice wrapped the end of her long hanging sleeve about my head. I was at once enfolded in a sort of white vapour full of the drowsy fragrance of the poppy. Everything disappeared at once; every light, every sound, and almost consciousness itself. Only the sense of being alive remained, and that was not unpleasant.

Suddenly the vapour vanished; Alice took her sleeve from my head, and I saw at my feet a huge mass of closely—packed buildings, brilliant light, movement, noisy traffic.... I saw Paris.

XIX

I had been in Paris before, and so I recognised at once the place to which Alice had directed her course. It was the Garden of the Tuileries with its old chestnut-trees, its iron railings, its fortress moat, and its brutal-looking Zouave sentinels. Passing the palace, passing the Church of St. Roche, on the steps of which the first Napoleon for the first time shed French blood, we came to a halt high over the Boulevard des Italiens, where the third Napoleon did the same thing and with the same success. Crowds of people, dandies young and old, workmen in blouses, women in gaudy dresses, were thronging on the pavements; the gilded restaurants and cafes were flaring with lights; omnibuses, carriages of all sorts and shapes, moved to and fro along the boulevard; everything was bustle, everything was brightness, wherever one chanced to look.... But, strange to say, I had no inclination to forsake my pure dark airy height. I had no inclination to get nearer to this human ant-hill. It seemed as though a hot, heavy, reddish vapour rose from it, half-fragrance, half-stench; so many lives were flung struggling in one heap together there. I was hesitating.... But suddenly, sharp as the clang of iron bars, the voice of a harlot of the streets floated up to me; like an insolent tongue, it was thrust out, this voice; it stung me like the sting of a viper. At once I saw in imagination the strong, heavy-jawed, greedy, flat Parisian face, the mercenary eyes, the paint and powder, the frizzed hair, and the nosegay of gaudy artificial flowers under the high-pointed hat, the polished nails like talons, the hideous crinoline.... I could fancy too one of our sons of the steppes running with pitiful eagerness after the doll put up for sale.... I could fancy him with clumsy coarseness and violent stammering, trying to imitate the manners of the waiters at Vefour's, mincing, flattering, wheedling ... and a feeling of loathing gained possession of me.... 'No,' I thought, 'here Alice has no need to be jealous....'

Meanwhile I perceived that we had gradually begun to descend.... Paris was rising to meet us with all its din and odour....

'Stop,' I said to Alice. 'Are you not stifled and oppressed here?'

'You asked me to bring you here yourself.'

'I am to blame, I take back my word. Take me away, Alice, I beseech you. To be sure, here is Prince Kulmametov hobbling along the boulevard; and his friend, Serge Varaksin, waves his hand to him, shouting: "Ivan Stepanitch, allons souper, make haste, zhay angazha Rigol-bouche itself!" Take me away from these furnished apartments and maisons dorees, from the Jockey Club and the Figaro, from close-shaven military heads and varnished barracks, from sergents-de-ville with Napoleonic beards, and from glasses of muddy absinthe, from gamblers playing dominoes at the cafes, and gamblers on the Bourse, from red ribbons in button-holes, from M. de Four, inventor of 'matrimonial specialities,' and the gratuitous consultations of Dr. Charles Albert, from liberal lectures and government pamphlets, from Parisian comedies and Parisian operas, from Parisian wit and Parisian ignorance.... Away! away! away!'

'Look down,' Alice answered; 'you are not now in Paris.'

I lowered my eyes.... It was true. A dark plain, intersected here and there by the whitish lines of roads, was rushing rapidly by below us, and only behind us on the horizon, like the reflection of an immense conflagration, rose the great glow of the innumerable lights of the capital of the world.

XX

Again a veil fell over my eyes.... Again I lost consciousness. The veil was withdrawn at last. What was it down there below? What was this park, with avenues of lopped lime-trees, with isolated fir-trees of the shape of parasols, with porticoes and temples in the Pompadour style, with statues of satyrs and nymphs of the Bernini school, with rococo tritons in the midst of meandering lakes, closed in by low parapets of blackened marble? Wasn't it Versailles? No, it was not Versailles. A small palace, also rococo, peeped out behind a clump of bushy oaks. The moon shone dimly, shrouded in mist, and over the earth there was, as it were spread out, a delicate smoke. The eye could not decide what it was, whether moonlight or fog. On one of the lakes a swan was asleep; its long back was white as the snow of the frost-bound steppes, while glow-worms gleamed like diamonds in the bluish shadow at the base of a statue.

'We are near Mannheim,' said Alice; 'this is the Schwetzingen garden.'

'We are in Germany,' I thought, and I fell to listening. All was silence, except somewhere, secluded and unseen, the splash and babble of falling water. It seemed continually to repeat the same words: 'Aye, aye, aye, for aye, aye.' And all at once I fancied that in the very centre of one of the avenues, between clipped walls of green, a cavalier came tripping along in red-heeled boots, a gold-braided coat, with lace ruffs at his wrists, a light steel rapier at his thigh, smilingly offering his arm to a lady in a powdered wig and a gay chintz.... Strange, pale faces.... I tried to look into them.... But already everything had vanished, and as before there was nothing but the babbling water.

'Those are dreams wandering,' whispered Alice; 'yesterday there was much—oh, much—to see; to-day, even the dreams avoid man's eye. Forward! forward!'

We soared higher and flew farther on. So smooth and easy was our flight that it seemed that we moved not, but everything moved to meet us. Mountains came into view, dark, undulating, covered with forest; they rose up and swam towards us.... And now they were slipping by beneath us, with all their windings, hollows, and narrow glades, with gleams of light from rapid brooks among the slumbering trees at the bottom of the dales; and in front of us more mountains sprung up again and floated towards us.... We were in the heart of the Black Forest.