‘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.…’ _March 12._ I cannot go on as I began, dear friend; it costs me too much effort and re-opens my wounds too cruelly. The disease, to use the doctor’s words, became defined, and Vera died of it. She did not live a fortnight after the fatal day of our momentary interview. I saw her once more before her death. I have no memory more heart-rending. I had already learned from the doctor that there was no hope. Late in the evening, when every one in the house was in bed, I stole to the door of her room and looked in at her. Vera lay in her bed, with closed eyes, thin and small, with a feverish flush on her cheeks. I gazed at her as though turned to stone. All at once she opened her eyes, fastened them upon me, scrutinised me, and stretching out a wasted hand-- ‘Was will er an dem heiligen Ort Der da … der dort …’[1] [1] _Faust_, Part I., Last Scene. she articulated, in a voice so terrible that I rushed headlong away. Almost all through her illness, she raved about _Faust_ and her mother, whom she sometimes called Martha, sometimes Gretchen’s mother. Vera died. I was at her burying. Ever since then I have given up everything and am settled here for ever.