shopkeeper's family, a quite stupid body, a character straight out of an
Ostrovsky comedy; and secondly, a daughter much older than Clara and not
like her--a very clever girl, and enthusiastic, only sickly, a remarkable
girl--and very advanced in her ideas, my dear boy! That they were living,
the widow and daughter, fairly comfortably, in a decent little house,
obtained by the sale of the bad portraits and holy pictures; that Clara ...
or Katia, if you like, from her childhood up impressed every one with her
talent, but was of an insubordinate, capricious temper, and used to be for
ever quarrelling with her father; that having an inborn passion for the
theatre, at sixteen she had run away from her parent's house with an
actress ...'

'With an actor?' put in Aratov.

'No, not with an actor, with an actress, to whom she became attached....
It's true this actress had a protector, a wealthy gentleman, no longer
young, who did not marry her simply because he happened to be married--and
indeed I fancy the actress was a married woman.' Furthermore Kupfer
informed Aratov that Clara had even before her coming to Moscow acted and
sung in provincial theatres, that, having lost her friend the actress--the
gentleman, too, it seemed, had died, or else he had made it up with his
wife--Kupfer could not quite remember this--she had made the acquaintance
of the princess, 'that heart of gold, whom you, my dear Yakov Andreitch,'
the speaker added with feeling, 'were incapable of appreciating properly';
that at last Clara had been offered an engagement in Kazan, and that she
had accepted it, though before then she used to declare that she would
never leave Moscow! But then how the people of Kazan liked her--it was
really astonishing! Whatever the performance was, nothing but nosegays and
presents! nosegays and presents! A wholesale miller, the greatest swell in
the province, had even presented her with a gold inkstand! Kupfer related