"I am at home," answered Kirilov. "What do you want?"

"Oh, it's you? I am very glad," said the stranger in a tone of
relief, and he began feeling in the dark for the doctor's hand,
found it and squeezed it tightly in his own. "I am very . . . very
glad! We are acquainted. My name is Abogin, and I had the honour
of meeting you in the summer at Gnutchev's. I am very glad I have
found you at home. For God's sake don't refuse to come back with
me at once. . . . My wife has been taken dangerously ill. . . . And
the carriage is waiting. . . ."

From the voice and gestures of the speaker it could be seen that
he was in a state of great excitement. Like a man terrified by a
house on fire or a mad dog, he could hardly restrain his rapid
breathing and spoke quickly in a shaking voice, and there was a
note of unaffected sincerity and childish alarm in his voice. As
people always do who are frightened and overwhelmed, he spoke in
brief, jerky sentences and uttered a great many unnecessary,
irrelevant words.

"I was afraid I might not find you in," he went on. "I was in a
perfect agony as I drove here. Put on your things and let us go,
for God's sake. . . . This is how it happened. Alexandr Semyonovitch
Paptchinsky, whom you know, came to see me. . . . We talked a little
and then we sat down to tea; suddenly my wife cried out, clutched
at her heart, and fell back on her chair. We carried her to bed and
. . . and I rubbed her forehead with ammonia and sprinkled her with
water . . . she lay as though she were dead. . . . I am afraid it
is aneurism . . . . Come along . . . her father died of aneurism."