by the hand of the beloved--but I feel no inclination to do that--and the
handwriting I think ugly. But that line contains my sentence.' Then he
recalled the promise he had made Anna about the article. He sat down to
the table, and set to work upon it, but everything he wrote struck him
as so false, so rhetorical ... especially so false ... as though he did
not believe in what he was writing nor in his own feelings.... And Clara
herself seemed so utterly unknown and uncomprehended! She seemed to
withhold herself from him. 'No!' he thought, throwing down the pen ...
'either authorship's altogether not my line, or I must wait a little!' He
fell to recalling his visit to the Milovidovs, and all Anna had told him,
that sweet, delightful Anna.... A word she had uttered--'pure'--suddenly
struck him. It was as though something scorched him, and shed light. 'Yes,'
he said aloud, 'she was pure, and I am pure.... That's what gave her this
power.'

Thoughts of the immortality of the soul, of the life beyond the grave
crowded upon him again. Was it not said in the Bible: 'Death, where is thy
sting?' And in Schiller: 'And the dead shall live!' (Auch die Todten sollen
leben!)

And too, he thought, in Mitskevitch: 'I will love thee to the end of time
... and beyond it!' And an English writer had said: 'Love is stronger than
death.' The text from Scripture produced particular effect on Aratov....
He tried to find the place where the words occurred.... He had no Bible;
he went to ask Platosha for one. She wondered, she brought out, however, a
very old book in a warped leather binding, with copper clasps, covered with
candle wax, and handed it over to Aratov. He bore it off to his own room,
but for a long time he could not find the text ... he stumbled, however, on
another: 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life
for his friends' (S. John xv. 13).