m the heat, as I had once almost done in New
York on a day like that. From this my mind jumped to the thought of
sudden death in general. Was it such a happy thing as people
pretended? For the person himself, yes, perhaps; but not for those
whom he had left at home, say, in the morning, and who were expecting
him at home in the evening. I granted that it was generally accepted
as the happiest death, but no one that had tried it had said so. To be
sure, one was spared a long sickness, with suffering from pain and
from the fear of death. But one had no time for making one's peace
with God, as it used to be said, and after all there might be
something in death-bed repentance, although cultivated people no
longer believed in it. Then I reverted to the family unprepared for
the sudden death: the mother, the wife, the children. I struggled to
get away from the question, but the vagaries which had lightly
dispersed themselves before clung persistently to the theme now. I
felt that it was like a bad dream. That was a promising diversion. Had
one any sort of volition in the quick changes of dreams? One was aware
of finding a certain nightmare insupportable, and of breaking from it
as by main force, and then falling into a deep, sweet sleep. Was death
something like waking from a dream such as that, which this life
largely was, and then sinking into a long, restful slumber, and
possibly never waking again?

Suddenly I perceived that the man had come back. He might have been
there some time with his effect of fussing and his pathetic sense of
unwelcome. I had not noticed; I only knew that he stood at the
half-open door with the knob of it in his hand looking into the room
blankly.

As he stood there he lifted his hand and rubbed it across his forehead
as if in a sort of daze from the heat. I recognized the gesture as one
very characteristic of myself; I had often rubbed my hand across my
forehead on a close, hot day like that. Then the man suddenly vanished
as if he had sunk through the floor.

People who had not noticed that he was there noticed now that he was
not there. Some made a crooked rush toward the place where he had
been, and one of those helpful fellow-men who are first in all needs
lifted his head and mainly carried him into the wide space which the
street stairs mounted to, and laid him on the floor. It was darker, if
not cooler there, and we stood back to give him the air which he drew
in with long, deep sighs.