Nabokov's story is written in the form of a letter from an unnamed narrator to V., his Russian expatriate friend living as a novelist in the United States. The narrator begins by telling V. that he has arrived in America. While in New York City, he fortuitously met a mutual friend of theirs (Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko), who provided V.'s address.

After fondly recalling their days as young, eager poets, the narrator begins telling the story of his doomed marriage—the real subject of his letter. He was married "a few weeks before the gentle Germans roared into Paris," which occurred in 1940. However, the narrator claims that he is "positive" that his wife "never existed." Her name is "the name of an illusion" and he is therefore able to speak of her with "as much detachment" as he would a character in a story. When...