he is a wet hen!' And he asks what it is for, to boot. If he
loved me and did not avenge himself, then let him bear it and not ask:
'what is that for?' He'll never get anything of me, unto ages of ages!'
And so she did not marry him. Soon afterward she made the acquaintance
of that actress, and left our house. My mother wept, but my father only
said: 'Away with the refractory goat from the flock!' and would take no
trouble, or try to hunt her up. Father did not understand Clara. On the
eve of her flight," added Anna, "she almost strangled me in her embrace,
and kept repeating: 'I cannot! I cannot do otherwise!... My heart may
break in two, but I cannot! our cage is too small ... it is not large
enough for my wings! And one cannot escape his fate'"....

"After that," remarked Anna, "we rarely saw each other.... When father
died she came to us for a couple of days, took nothing from the
inheritance, and again disappeared. She found it oppressive with us....
I saw that. Then she returned to Kazan as an actress."

Aratoff began to interrogate Anna concerning the theatre, the parts in
which Clara had appeared, her success.... Anna answered in detail, but
with the same sad, although animated enthusiasm. She even showed Aratoff
a photographic portrait, which represented Clara in the costume of one
of her parts. In the portrait she was looking to one side, as though
turning away from the spectators; the ribbon intertwined with her thick
hair fell like a serpent on her bare arm. Aratoff gazed long at that
portrait, thought it a good likeness, inquired whether Clara had not
taken part in public readings, and learned that she had not; that she
required the excitement of the theatre, of the stage ... but another
question was burning on his lips.

"Anna Semyonovna!" he exclaimed at last, not loudly, but with peculiar
force, "tell me, I entreat you, why she ... why she made up her mind to
that frightful step?"

Anna dropped her eyes.--"I do not know!" she said, after the lapse of
several minutes.--"God is my witness, I do not know!" she continued
impetuously, perceiving that Aratoff had flung his hands apart as though
he did not believe her.... "From the very time she arrived here she
seemed to be thoughtful, gloomy. Something must infallibly have happened
to her in Moscow, which I was not able to divine! But, on the contrary,
on that fatal day, she seemed ... if not more cheerful, at any rate more
tranquil than usual. I did not e