Aratoff strove to shout, strove to break that frightful nightmare....  Suddenly everything grew dark round about ... and the woman returned to him.

But she was no longer a statue whom he knew not ... she was Clara.  She halted in front of him, folded her arms, and gazed sternly and attentively at him.  Her lips were tightly compressed, but it seemed to Aratoff that he heard the words: 

“If thou wishest to know who I am, go thither!”

“Whither?” he asked.

“Thither!”—­the moaning answer made itself audible.—­“Thither!”

Aratoff awoke.

He sat up in bed, lighted a candle which stood on his night-stand, but did not rise, and sat there for a long time slowly gazing about him.  It seemed to him that something had taken place within him since he went to bed; that something had taken root within him ... something had taken possession of him.  “But can that be possible?” he whispered unconsciously.  “Can it be that such a power exists?”

He could not remain in bed.  He softly dressed himself and paced his chamber until daylight.  And strange to say!  He did not think about Clara for a single minute,—­and he did not think about her because he had made up his mind to set off for Kazan that very day!

He thought only of that journey, of how it was to be made, and what he ought to take with him,—­and how he would there ferret out and find out everything,—­and regain his composure.

“If thou dost not go,” he argued with himself, “thou wilt surely lose thy reason!” He was afraid of that; he was afraid of his nerves.  He was convinced that as soon as he should see all that with his own eyes, all obsessions would flee like a nocturnal nightmare.—­“And the journey will occupy not more than a week in all,” he thought....  “What is a week?  And there is no other way of ridding myself of it.”

The rising sun illuminated his room; but the light of day did not disperse the shades of night which weighed upon him, did not alter his decision.

Platosha came near having an apoplectic stroke when he communicated his decision to her.  She even squatted down on her heels ... her legs gave way under her.  “To Kazan?  Why to Kazan?” she whispered, protruding her eyes which were already blind enough without that.  She would not have been any more astounded had she learned that her Yasha was going to marry the neighbouring baker’s daughter, or depart to America.—­“And shalt thou stay long in Kazan?”

“I shall return at the end of a week,” replied Aratoff, as he stood half-turned away from his aunt, who was still sitting on the floor.

Platosha tried to remonstrate again, but Aratoff shouted at her in an utterly unexpected and unusual manner: 

“I am not a baby,” he yelled, turning pale all over, while his lips quivered and his eyes flashed viciously.—­“I am six-and-twenty years of age.  I know what I am about,—­I am free to do as I please!—­I will not permit any one....  Give me money for the journey; prepare a trunk with linen and clothing ... and do not bother me!  I shall return at the end of a week, Platosha,” he added, in a softer tone.