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Insightful, quick novella that doesn't reach the heights of Zweig's masterful CHESS STORY but reminded me quite a bit of DEATH IN VENICE. The set-up in the first 15 pages is really fun (I love the way this generation of writers needs a first-person justification for a third person narrative, it's realism mingling with the-author-is-present) and the inner-frame that the title references has some excellent moments. There's a particularly good hand description that worth watching out for.

And I loved the cadence and repetition of this paragraph (spoilers), which is a great bit of morning-after writing: "How long this dreadful condition lasted I cannot say: such moments are outside the measured time of ordinary life. But suddenly another fear came over me, swift and terrible: the stranger whose name I did not know might wake up and speak to me. And I knew there was only one thing to do: I must get dressed and make my escape before he woke. I must not let him set eyes on me again, I must not speak to him again. I must save myself before it was too late, go away, away, away, back to some kind of life of my own, to my hotel, I must leave this pernicious place, leave this country, never meet him again, never look him in the eye, have no witnesses, no accusers, no one who knew."

Sadly, some steam comes out of the narrative after this wonderful sequence, as the action trends expected, but it's short enough that it doesn't overstay its welcome. This edition (Pushkin) has something funky going on with the spacing between words in certain lines that drove me a bit nuts, but the translation is good. Makes for a fun rainy day, this one.