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
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