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
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