heard your sister once ... but all that was needed was to hear and see
your sister once, in order to...."

"Do you mean to write her biography?" Anna put another question.

Aratoff had not expected that word; nevertheless, he immediately
answered "Why not?" But the chief point was that he wished to acquaint
the public....

Anna stopped him with a gesture of her hand.

"To what end? The public caused her much grief without that; and Katya
had only just begun to live. But if you yourself" (Anna looked at him
and again smiled that same sad smile, only now it was more cordial ...
apparently she was thinking: "Yes, thou dost inspire me with
confidence") ... "if you yourself cherish such sympathy for her, then
permit me to request that you come to us this evening ... after dinner.
I cannot now ... so suddenly.... I will collect my forces.... I will
make an effort.... Akh, I loved her too greatly!"

Anna turned away; she was on the point of bursting into sobs.

Aratoff rose alertly from his chair, thanked her for her proposal, said
that he would come without fail ... without fail! and went away, bearing
in his soul an impression of a quiet voice, of gentle and sorrowful
eyes--and burning with the languor of anticipation.

XIII

Aratoff returned to the Milovidoffs' house that same day, and conversed
for three whole hours with Anna Semyonovna. Madame Milovidoff went to
bed immediately after dinner--at two o'clock--and "rested" until evening
tea, at seven o'clock. Aratoff's conversation with Clara's sister was
not, properly speaking, a conversation: she did almost the whole of the
talking, at first with hesitation, with confusion, but afterward with
uncontrollable fervour. She had, evidently, idolised her sister. The
confidence wherewith Aratoff had inspired her waxed and strengthened;
she was no longer embarrassed; she even fell to weeping softly, twice,
in his presence. He seemed to her worthy of her frank revelations and
effusions. Nothing of that sort had ever before come into her own dull
life!... And he ... he drank in her every word.

This, then, is what he learned ... much of it, as a matter of course,
from what she refrained from saying ... and much he filled out for
himself.

In her youth Clara had been, without doubt, a disagreeable child; and as
a young girl she had been only a little softer: self-willed,
hot-tempered, vain, she had not got on particularly well with her
father, whom she despised fo