orture that was not pain, yet
infinitely worse. A dry, pringling aura as of billions of minute
electric shocks crept upward over his flesh, till it reached his head,
where it seemed to culminate in a white flash, which he felt rather
than saw.

His body felt strange and unfamiliar to him. It seemed to have no
weight, and at times his hands would appear to swell swiftly to the
size of mammoth boxing-gloves, so that he must rub them together to
feel that they were his own.

He put off consulting a doctor from day to day, alleging that he had
not the time. But the real reason, though he never admitted it, was the
fear that the doctor might tell him what he guessed to be the truth.

Were his wits leaving him? The horror of the question smote through him
like the drive of a javelin. What was to happen? What nameless calamity
impended?

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

His watch under his pillow took up the refrain. How to grasp the
morrow's business, how control the sluice gates of that torrent he had
unchained, with this unspeakable crumbling and disintegrating of his
faculties going on?

Jaded, feeble, he rose to meet another day. He drove down town, trying
not to hear the beat of his horses' hoofs. Dizzy and stupefied, he
gained Gretry's office, and alone with his terrors sat in the chair
before his desk, waiting, waiting.

Then far away the great gong struck. Just over his head, penetrating
wood and iron, he heard the mighty throe of the Pit once more
beginning, moving. And then, once again, the limp and ravelled fibres
of being grew tight with a wrench. Under the stimulus of the roar of
the maelstrom, the flagging, wavering brain righted itself once more,
and--how, he himself could not say--the business of the day was
despatched, the battle was once more urged. Often he acted upon what he
knew to be blind, unreasoned instinct. Judgment, clear reasoning, at
times, he felt, forsook him. Decisions that involved what seemed to be
the very stronghold of his situation, had to be taken without a
moment's warning. He decided for or against without knowing why. Under
his feet fissures opened. He must take the leap without seeing the
other edge. Somehow he always landed upon his feet; somehow his great,
cumbersome engine, lurching, swaying, in spite of loosened joints,
always kept the track.

Luck, his golden goddess, the genius of glittering wings, was with him
yet. Sorely tried, flouted even she yet remained