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,
