and freedom so
sufficient that helplessness came upon me like a change of temperament;
it took the form of hopelessness almost at once.

What was death? The secret of life. What knew I of the system of
things on which a blow upon the head had ushered me all unready,
reluctant, and uninstructed as I was? No more than the ruddiest live
stockbroker in the street, whose blood went bounding, that fresh
morning, to the antics of the Santa Ma. I was not accustomed to be
uninformed; my ignorance appalled me. Even in the deeps of my misery,
I found space for a sense of humiliation; I felt profoundly mortified.
In that spot, in that way, of all others, why was I withheld? Was it
the custom of the black country called Death, which we mark
"unexplored" upon the map of life,--was it the habit to tie a man to
the place where he had died? But this was not the spot where I had
died. It was the spot where I had learned that I had died. It was the
place where the consciousness of death had wrought itself, not upon the
nerves of the body, but upon the faculties of the mind. I had been
dead twelve hours before I found it out.

I looked up and down the street, where the living men scurried to and
fro upon their little errands. These seemed immeasurably small. I
looked upon them with disgust. Fettered to that pavement, like a
convict to his ball-and-chain, I passed and repassed in wretchedness
whose quality I cannot express, and would not if I could.

"I am punished," I said; "I am punished for that which I have done.
This is my doom. I am imprisoned here."

Sometimes I broke into uncontrollable misery, crying upon my wife's
dear name. Then I would hush the outbreak, lest some one overhear me;
and then I would remember that no one could overhear. I looked into
the faces of the people whom I met and passed, with such longings for
one single sign of recognition as are not to be described. It even
occurred to me that among them all one might be found of whom my love
and grief and will might make a messenger to Helen. But I found none
such, or I gained no such power; and, sick at heart, I turned away.

Suddenly, as I threaded the thick of the press, beating to and fro, and
up and down, as dead leaves move before the wind, some one softly
touched my hand.

It was the St. Bernard, the broker's dog. This time, as before, he
looked into my face with signs of pleasure or of pity, or of both, and
made as if he would caress m