"Did she drown herself?"

"Yes."

"They took the body to the cemetery?"

"Yes."

"Oh, then I wasn't dreaming! You see for yourself.... And your wife came and fetched me there...."

"No, no."

"Yes, she did."

"No, no, old chap."

The sick man reflected:

"I no longer know," he said, "what I've lived and what I've dreamed. The confounded snake-thing: that ... that was real. It had been eating me up ... eating me up since I was a boy...."