On the day before her flight,' added Anna, 'she almost smothered me in her embraces, and kept repeating: "I can't, I can't help it! . . . My heart 's torn, but I can't help it ! your cage is too small . . . it cramps my wings! And there 's no escaping one's fate. . . ."
'After that,' observed Anna, 'we saw each other very seldom. . . . When my father died, she came for a couple of days, would take nothing of her inheritance, and vanished again. She was unhappy with us ... I could see that. Afterwards she came to Kazan as an actress.'
Aratov began questioning Anna about the theatre, about the parts in which Clara had appeared, about her triumphs. . . . Anna answered in detail, but with the same mournful, though keen fervour. She even showed Aratov a photograph, in which Clara had been taken in the costume of one of her parts. In the photograph she was looking away, as though turning from the spectators; her thick hair tied with a ribbon fell in a coil on her bare arm. Aratov looked a long time at the photograph, thought it like, asked whether Clara had taken part in public recitations, and learnt that she had not; that she had needed the excitement of the theatre, the scenery . . . but another question was burning on his lips.
'Anna Semyonovna!' he cried at last, not
68
