ing the first forty days?"

"Yes; and after that come its tribulations."[66]

Aratoff was surprised at his aunt's erudition, and went off to his own
room.--And again he felt the same thing, that same power upon him. The
power was manifested thus--that the image of Clara incessantly presented
itself to him, in its most minute details,--details which he did not
seem to have observed during her lifetime; he saw ... he saw her
fingers, her nails, the bands of hair on her cheeks below her temples, a
small mole under the left eye; he saw the movement of her lips, her
nostrils, her eyebrows ... and what sort of a gait she had, and how she
held her head a little on the right side ... he saw everything!--He did
not admire all this at all; he simply could not help thinking about it
and seeing it.--Yet he did not dream about her during the first night
after his return ... he was very weary and slept like one slain. On the
other hand, no sooner did he awake than she again entered his room, and
there she remained, as though she had been its owner; just as though she
had purchased for herself that right by her voluntary death, without
asking him or requiring his permission.

He took her photograph; he began to reproduce it, to enlarge it. Then it
occurred to him to arrange it for the stereoscope. It cost him a great
deal of trouble, but at last he succeeded. He fairly started when he
beheld through the glass her figure which had acquired the semblance of
bodily substance. But that figure was grey, as though covered with
dust ... and moreover, the eyes ... the eyes still gazed aside, as
though they were averting themselves. He began to gaze at them for a
long, long time, as though expecting that they might, at any moment,
turn themselves in his direction ... he even puckered up his eyes
deliberately ... but the eyes remained motionless, and the whole figure
assumed the aspect of a doll. He went away, threw himself into an
arm-chair, got out the leaf which he had torn from her diary, with the
underlined words, and thought: "They say that people in love kiss the
lines which have been written by a beloved hand; but I have no desire to
do that--and the chirography appears to me ugly into the bargain. But in
that line lies my condemnation."--At this point there flashed into his
mind the promise he had made to Anna about the article. He seated
himself at his table, and set about writing it; but everything he wrote
turned out so rhetorical