to end like this? Then he fancied she would write to him again; then he
asked himself whether he ought not to write her a letter, explaining
everything, since he did not at all like leaving an unfavourable
impression of himself.... But exactly what to explain? Then he stirred
up in himself almost a feeling of repulsion for her, for her insistence,
her impertinence; and then again he saw that unutterably touching face
and heard an irresistible voice; then he recalled her singing, her
recitation--and could not be sure whether he had been right in his
wholesale condemnation of it. In fact, he was all loose ends! At last he
was heartily sick of it, and resolved to keep a firm hand over himself, as
it is called, and to obliterate the whole incident, as it was unmistakably
hindering his studies and destroying his peace of mind. It turned out not
so easy to carry out this resolution ... more than a week passed by before
he got back into his old accustomed groove. Luckily Kupfer did not turn up
at all; he was in fact out of Moscow. Not long before the incident, Aratov
had begun to work at painting in connection with his photographic plans; he
set to work upon it now with redoubled zest.

So, imperceptibly, with a few (to use the doctors' expression) 'symptoms
of relapse,' manifested, for instance, in his once almost deciding to call
upon the princess, two months passed ... then three months ... and Aratov
was the old Aratov again. Only somewhere down below, under the surface of
his life, something like a dark and burdensome secret dogged him wherever
he went. So a great fish just caught on the hook, but not yet drawn up,
will swim at the bottom of a deep stream under the very boat where the
angler sits with a stout rod in his hand.

And one day, skimming through a not quite new number of the _Moscow
Gazette_, Aratov lighted upon the following paragraph: