Page:The Novels of Ivan Turgenev (volume X).djvu/116

Rh I fell asleep. I had an extraordinary dream. I fancied I was lying in my room, in my bed — and was not asleep, could not even close my eyes. And again I heard the sound. ... I turned over. . . . The moonlight on the floor began softly to lift, to rise up, to round off slightly above. . . . Before me, impalpable as mist, a white woman was standing motionless. 'Who are you?' I asked with an effort. A voice made answer, like the rustle of leaves: 'It is I ... I ... I ... I have come for you.'

'For me? But who are you?' 'Come by night to the edge of the wood where there stands an old oak-tree. I will be there.' I tried to look closely into the face of the mysterious woman — and suddenly I gave an involuntary shudder: there was a chilly breath upon me. And then I was not lying down, but sitting up in my bed; and where, as I fancied, the phantom had stood, the moonlight lay in a long streak of white upon the floor.

II The day passed somehow. I tried, I remember, to read, to work. . . everything was a failure. The night came. My heart was throbbing