ded to sit upon
the edge of his bed, leaning a little backward so as not to fall upon
the floor, and he dragged the bed out into the sitting-room, preferring
somehow to die there. For a moment the idea of lying at length upon the
bed occurred to him, but in an instant he recoiled from it, horrified at
the thought of the death that struck from above; no, it would be best to
sit upon the edge of the bed, falling backward with the shot. Then he
wondered as to which it should be, his heart or his head; evidently the
head was the better; there upon the right side in the little hollow of
the temple, and the next moment he found himself curiously touching and
pressing the spot with his fingers. All at once he heard the little
clicking noise that the clock makes a minute or so before the hour. It
was almost two; he sat down upon the edge of the bed, cocking the
revolver, waiting for the clock to strike. An idea came to him, and he
looked at the calendar that stood at the right of the clock upon the top
of the low bookcase. It was the twelfth of April, Thursday; that, then,
was to be the date of his death--Thursday, April twelfth, at two in the
morning, so it would read upon his gravestone. For an instant the
awfulness of the thing he was to do came upon him, and the next instant
he found himself wondering if they still coursed jack-rabbits with
greyhounds down at Coronado the way they used to do when he was there.
All at once the clock struck two, and at the very last instant a
strange impulse to seat himself before the mirror came upon him. He drew
up a chair before it, watching his reflection intently, but even as he
raised the revolver he suddenly changed his purpose without knowing why,
and all at once crammed the muzzle into his mouth. He drew the trigger.

He heard no sound of a report; he felt no shock, but a great feebleness
ran throughout his limbs, a relaxing and weakening of all his muscles;
his eyes were open and he saw everything small and seemingly very far
off as through the reversed end of an opera-glass. Suddenly he fainted.

When Vandover came to himself again it was early morning. The room was
full of daylight, but the gas was still burning. Little by little the
fearful things of the night came back to him; he realized that he had
shot himself, and he waited for the end, not daring to move, his eyes
closed, his hand still gripping the scratched butt of the revolver in
his lap. For a long time he lay back in t