e?"

"Splendid," assented Aratoff.--"She communicated to me many curious
things."

"Did she tell thee precisely how Clara poisoned herself?"

"Thou meanest ... what dost thou mean?"

"Why, in what manner?"

"No.... She was still in such affliction.... I did not dare to question
her too much. But was there anything peculiar about it?"

"Of course there was. Just imagine: she was to have acted that very
day--and she did act. She took a phial of poison with her to the
theatre, drank it before the first act, and in that condition played
through the whole of that act. With the poison inside her! What dost
thou think of that strength of will? What character, wasn't it? And they
say that she never sustained her role with so much feeling, with so much
warmth! The audience suspected nothing, applauded, recalled her.... But
as soon as the curtain fell she dropped down where she stood on the
stage. She began to writhe ... and writhe ... and at the end of an hour
her spirit fled! But is it possible I did not tell thee that? It was
mentioned in the newspapers also."

Aratoff's hands suddenly turned cold and his chest began to heave. "No,
thou didst not tell me that," he said at last.--"And dost thou not know
what the piece was?"

Kupfer meditated.--"I was told the name of the piece ... a young girl
who has been betrayed appears in it.... It must be some drama or other.
Clara was born for dramatic parts. Her very appearance.... But where art
thou going?" Kupfer interrupted himself, perceiving that Aratoff was
picking up his cap.

"I do not feel quite well," replied Aratoff. "Good-bye.... I will drop
in some other time."

Kupfer held him back and looked him in the face.--"What a nervous fellow
thou art, brother! Just look at thyself.... Thou hast turned as white as
clay."

"I do not feel well," repeated Aratoff, freeing himself from Kupfer's
hands and going his way. Only at that moment did it become clear to him
that he had gone to Kupfer with the sole object of talking about
Clara....

"About foolish, about unhappy Clara"....

But on reaching home he speedily recovered his composure to a certain
extent.

The circumstances which had attended Clara's death at first exerted a
shattering impression upon him ... but later on that acting "with the
poison inside her," as Kupfer had expressed it, seemed to him a
monstrous phrase, a piece of bravado, and he tried not to think of it,
fearing to arouse within himself a feeli