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).
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.
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.