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!'

* * * * *

Platonida Ivanovna was incessantly coming into Aratov's room. She did not
worry him with questions; she merely looked at him, muttered, sighed,
and went out again. But he refused his dinner too: this was really too
dreadful. The old lady set off to an acquaintance of hers, a district
doctor, in whom she placed some confidence, simply because he did not drink
and had a German wife. Aratov was surprised when she brought him in to see
him; but Platonida Ivanovna so earnestly implored her darling Yashenka to
allow Paramon Paramonitch (that was the doctor's name) to examine him--if
only for her sake--that Aratov consented. Paramon Paramonitch felt his
pulse, looked at his tongue, asked a question, and announced at last that
it was absolutely necessary for him to 'auscultate' him. Aratov was in such
an amiable frame of mind that he agreed to this too. The doctor delicately
uncovered his chest, delicately tapped, listened, hummed and hawed,
prescribed some drops and a mixture, and, above all, advised him to keep