"Ich bin die schwester von Madame Schewitsch," mentioning the name of the foreign friend with whom I had been spending that afternoon: "Ich weisz das Sie Heute Nach mittag bei meiner schwester waren."[1]
[1] Translation: "I am the sister of Madame Schewitsch—I know that you spent this afternoon with my sister."
She had evidently a strong, almost overwhelming desire to make some communication to me for her sister, but the difficulty in doing so seemed equally strong.
It lay beyond the question of language. She spoke with sufficient strength, and I could understand perfectly her well-chosen and well-pronounced words. But some insuperable obstacle seemed to prevent her telling me what she wished to convey, and the despairing attempt to surmount this was painful in the extreme.
I assured her of my willingness to help in any way possible, and made a few suggestions, but all in vain.
"Is it that you are not happy?"
"No—no! That is not it."
It seemed to me some sort of warning which she wished to convey, and had some connection with illness, for the words achtung and krankheit (warning and illness) were repeated more than once, but no definite message came.
I then asked if she could write it, and she caught eagerly at the idea. So I borrowed a pencil and some paper, and placed them on a small table in the middle of the room, with a chair in front of it. She came quite close to the table (five gas burners were more than half turned on, so there was plenty of light), sat down, and took up the pencil, but almost immediately threw it down again, saying in a most unhappy and despairing voice: "Nein! nein! Ich kann es selbst nicht schreiben!"[2] and vanished before my very eyes as she rose from the table. Now had this been a case of fraud, and supposing that some woman had means of discovering the name of my New York friend and the fact of my having spent that very afternoon with her, what would have been easier than to write or give some commonplace message in a language of which she had already proved herself mistress?
[2] Translation: "No! no! I cannot even write it!"