Vladimir Nabokov. Terror
Presently I found myself again at the entrance of my hotel. Someone came up to me, pronounced my name, and thrust a folded slip of paper into my limp hand. Automatically I unfolded it, and at once my terror vanished. Everything around me became again ordinary and unobtrusive: the hotel, the changing reflections in the glass of the revolving door, the familiar face of the bellboy who had handed me the telegram. I now stood in the middle of the spacious vestibule. A man with a pipe and a checked cap brushed against me in passing and gravely apologized. I felt astonishment and an intense, unbearable but quite human pain. The telegram said she was dying