When Platonida Ivanovna came in to him next morning, he was still in the same position ... but the weakness had not passed off, and he actually preferred to remain in bed. Platonida Ivanovna did not like the pallor of his face at all. ‘Lord, have mercy on us! what is it?’ she thought; ‘not a drop of blood in his face, refuses broth, lies there and smiles, and keeps declaring he’s perfectly well!’ He refused breakfast too. ‘What is the matter with you, Yasha?’ she questioned him; ‘do you mean to lie in bed all day?’ ‘And what if I did?’ Aratov answered gently. This very gentleness again Platonida Ivanovna did not like at all. Aratov had the air of a man who has discovered a great, very delightful secret, and is jealously guarding it and keeping it to himself. He was looking forward to the night, not impatiently, but with curiosity. ‘What next?’ he was asking himself; ‘what will happen?’ Astonishment, incredulity, he had ceased to feel; he did not doubt that he was in communication with Clara, that they loved one another ... that, too, he had no doubt about. Only ... what could come of such love? He recalled that kiss ... and a delicious shiver ran swiftly and sweetly through all his limbs. ‘Such a kiss,’ was his thought, ‘even Romeo and Juliet knew not! But next time I will be stronger.... I will master her.... She shall come with a wreath of tiny roses in her dark curls.... ‘But what next? We cannot live together, can we? Then must I die so as to be with her? Is it not for that she has come; and is it not _so_ she means to take me captive? ‘Well; what then? If I must die, let me die. Death has no terrors for me now. It cannot, then, annihilate me? On the contrary, only _thus_ and _there_ can I be happy ... as I have not been happy in life, as she has not.... We are both pure! Oh, that kiss!’ * * * * *