Next day, before dinner, I went to the Priemkovs’. Priemkov met me with a care-worn face.
‘My wife is ill,’ he began; ‘she is in bed; I sent for a doctor.’
‘What is the matter with her?’
‘I can’t make out. Yesterday evening she went into the garden and suddenly came back quite beside herself, panic-stricken. Her maid ran for me. I went in, and asked my wife what was wrong. She made no answer, and so she has lain; by night delirium set in. In her delirium she said all sorts of things; she mentioned you. The maid told me an extraordinary thing; that Vera’s mother appeared to her in the garden; she fancied she was coming to meet her with open arms.’
You can imagine what I felt at these words.
‘Of course that’s nonsense,’ Priemkov went on; ‘though I must admit that extraordinary things have happened to my wife in that way.’
‘And you say Vera Nikolaevna is very unwell?’
‘Yes: she was very bad in the night; now she is wandering.’
‘What did the doctor say?’
‘The doctor said that the disease was undefined as yet.…’