culiar about me? And what sort of a beauty am I?--My face is like
everybody else's face.... However, she was not a beauty either.

"She was not a beauty ... but what an expressive face she had! Impassive
... but expressive! I have never before seen such a face.--And she has
talent ... that is to say, she had talent, undoubted talent. Wild,
untrained, even coarse ... but undoubted.--And in that case also I was
unjust to her."--Aratoff mentally transported himself to the musical
morning ... and noticed that he remembered with remarkable distinctness
every word she had sung or recited, every intonation.... That would not
have been the case had she been devoid of talent.

"And now all that is in the grave, where she has thrust herself.... But
I have nothing to do with that.... I am not to blame! It would even be
absurd to think that I am to blame."--Again it flashed into Aratoff's
mind that even had she had "anything of that sort" about her, his
conduct during the interview would indubitably have disenchanted her.
That was why she had broken into such harsh laughter at parting.--And
where was the proof that she had poisoned herself on account of an
unhappy love? It is only newspaper correspondents who attribute every
such death to unhappy love!--But life easily becomes repulsive to people
with character, like Clara ... and tiresome. Yes, tiresome. Kupfer was
right: living simply bored her.

"In spite of her success, of her ovations?"--Aratoff meditated.--The
psychological analysis to which he surrendered himself was even
agreeable to him. Unaccustomed as he had been, up to this time, to all
contact with women, he did not suspect how significant for him was this
tense examination of a woman's soul.

"Consequently," he pursued his meditations, "art did not satisfy her,
did not fill the void of her life. Genuine artists exist only for art,
for the theatre.... Everything else pales before that which they regard
as their vocation.... She was a dilettante!"

Here Aratoff again became thoughtful.--No, the word "dilettante" did not
consort with that face, with the expression of that face, of those
eyes....

And again there rose up before him the image of Clara with her
tear-filled eyes riveted upon him, and her clenched hands raised to her
lips....

"Akh, I won't think of it, I won't think of it ..." he whispered....
"What is the use?"

In this manner the whole day passed. During dinner Aratoff chatted a
great deal with P