He thought: 'That's not right. It ought to be: Greater _power_ hath no
man.'

'But if she did not lay down her life for me at all? If she made an end of
herself simply because life had become a burden to her? What if, after all,
she did not come to that meeting for anything to do with love at all?'

But at that instant he pictured to himself Clara before their parting on
the boulevard.... He remembered the look of pain on her face, and the tears
and the words, 'Ah, you understood nothing!'

No! he could have no doubt why and for whom she had laid down her life....

So passed that whole day till night-time.


XV

Aratov went to bed early, without feeling specially sleepy, but he hoped
to find repose in bed. The strained condition of his nerves brought about
an exhaustion far more unbearable than the bodily fatigue of the journey
and the railway. However, exhausted as he was, he could not get to sleep.
He tried to read ... but the lines danced before his eyes. He put out the
candle, and darkness reigned in his room. But still he lay sleepless, with
his eyes shut.... And it began to seem to him some one was whispering
in his ear.... 'The beating of the heart, the pulse of the blood,' he
thought.... But the whisper passed into connected speech. Some one was
talking in Russian hurriedly, plaintively, and indistinctly. Not one
separate word could he catch.... But it was the voice of Clara.