I don’t know precisely what I dreamed, but the rocks and the sea and the slanting rays of the setting sun — all this I still seemed to see when I woke up and opened my eyes, which for the first time in my life were literally wet with tears. A feeling of happiness, as yet unknown to me, passed through my heart until it hurt.
The first time Stavrogin ever felt happy was when he dreamed of the sun's rays and saw beauty. It's very Dostoyevskian - the rays of sun and the notion that beauty can save the world.
No doubt Stavrogin was irked about Verkhovensky calling him a beauty. This is beauty to him, and he sees no semblance of it in himself.
