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