to?' Kupfer interrupted himself, seeing that Aratov was reaching after his hat.
'I don't feel quite well,' replied Aratov. 'Good-bye . . . I '11 come in another time.'
Kupfer stopped him and looked into his face. 'What a nervous fellow you are, my boy! Just look at yourself . . . You're as white as chalk.'
'I 'm not well,' repeated Aratov, and, disengaging himself from Kupfer's detaining hands, he started homewards. Only at that instant it became clear to him that he had come to Kupfer with the sole object of talking of Clara . . .
'Unhappy Clara, poor frantic Clara. . . .'
On reaching home, however, he quickly regained his composure to a certain degree.
The circumstances accompanying Clara's death had at first given him a violent shock . . . but later on this performance 'with the poison inside her,' as Kupfer had expressed it, struck him as a kind of monstrous pose, a piece of bravado, and he was already trying not to think about it, fearing to arouse a feeling in himself, not unlike repugnance. And at dinner, as he sat facing Platosha, he suddenly recalled her midnight appearance, recalled that abbreviated dressing-jacket, the cap with the high ribbon —
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