“Nonsense,” I think. “It’s the influence of one organism on another. My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to the dog. That’s all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and previsions.” A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still. There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings in one’s ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed.... The dawn is still far away. But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!” I hear a whisper. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!” I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window, close against the wall stands a woman in a black dress. She is brightly lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale, stern and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles. “It is I....” she says, “I ... Katy!” In the moon all women’s eyes are big and black, people are taller and paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the first moment. “What’s the matter?” “Forgive me,” she says. “I suddenly felt so dreary ... I could not bear it. So I came here. There’s a light in your window ... and I decided to knock.... Forgive me.... Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are you doing now?” “Nothing. Insomnia.” Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of confidence. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!” she says imploringly, stretching out both her hands to me. “Dear, I beg you ... I implore.... If you do not despise my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you.” “What is it?” “Take my money.” “What next? What’s the good of your money to me?” “You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will take it? Yes? Dear ... Yes?” She looks into my face eagerly and repeats: “Yes? You will take it?” “No, my dear, I won’t take it....”, I say. “Thank you.” She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my refusal would not allow any further talk of money. “Go home to sleep,” I say. “I’ll see you to-morrow.” “It means, you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks sadly. “I don’t say that. But your money is no good to me.” “Forgive me,” she says lowering her voice by a full octave. “I understand you. To be obliged to a person like me ... a retired actress... But good-bye.” And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say “Good-bye.”