But at his last words Clara suddenly turned to him and he beheld the same startled, profoundly-sorrowful visage, with the same large, bright tears in its eyes, with the same woful expression around the parted lips; and the visage was so fine thus that he involuntarily broke off short and felt within himself something akin to fright, and pity and forbearance.

“Akh, why ... why are you like this? ...” she said with irresistibly sincere and upright force—­and what a touching ring there was to her voice!—­“Is it possible that my appeal to you can have offended you?...  Is it possible that you have understood nothing?...  Ah, yes!  You have not understood anything, you have not understood what I said to you.  God knows what you have imagined about me, you have not even reflected what it cost me to write to you!...  You have been anxious only on your own account, about your own dignity, your own peace!...  But did I....” (she so tightly clenched her hands which she had raised to her lips that her fingers cracked audibly)....  “As though I had made any demands upon you, as though explanations were requisite to begin with....  ’My dear madame’....  ’I even find it astonishing’....  ’If I can be of service to you’....  Akh, how foolish I have been!—­I have been deceived in you, in your face!...  When I saw you for the first time....  There....  There you stand....  And not one word do you utter!  Have you really not a word to say?”

She had been imploring....  Her face suddenly flushed, and as suddenly assumed an evil and audacious expression,—­“O Lord! how stupid this is!”—­she cried suddenly, with a harsh laugh.—­“How stupid our tryst is!  How stupid I am! ... and you, too!...  Fie!”

She made a disdainful gesture with her hand as though sweeping him out of her path, and passing around him she ran swiftly from the boulevard and disappeared.

That gesture of the hand, that insulting laugh, that final exclamation instantly restored Aratoff to his former frame of mind and stifled in him the feeling which had risen in his soul when she turned to him with tears in her eyes.  Again he waxed wroth, and came near shouting after the retreating girl:  “You may turn out a good actress, but why have you taken it into your head to play a comedy on me?”

With great strides he returned home, and although he continued to be indignant and to rage all the way thither, still, at the same time, athwart all these evil, hostile feelings there forced its way the memory of that wondrous face which he had beheld only for the twinkling of an eye....  He even put to himself the question:  “Why did not I answer her when she demanded from me at least one word?”—­“I did not have time,” ... he thought....  “She did not give me a chance to utter that word....  And what would I have uttered?”

But he immediately shook his head and said, “An actress!”

And yet, at the same time, the vanity of the inexperienced, nervous youth, which had been wounded at first, now felt rather flattered at the passion which he had inspired....