n
even, on looking back, see him sitting up, very large and still, one
thick arm holding me. I fancy that I can still smell the stuff of his
clothes. I fancy that he talked to me, very quietly, reassuring me about
something. But, upon my word, I don't know. One can so easily imagine
what one wants to be true, and now I want, more than I would then ever
have believed to be possible, to have had actual contact with him. It is
the only conversation between us that can ever have existed: never,
before or after, was there another opportunity. And in any case there
can scarcely have been a conversation, because I certainly said nothing,
and I cannot remember anything that he said, if indeed he said anything
at all. At any rate I was there in the Sadovaya, I was in a cab, I was
in my bed. The truth of the rest of it any one may decide for
himself....

II

That Thursday was March 15. I was conscious of my existence again on
Sunday, April 1st. I opened my eyes and saw that there was a thaw. That
was the first thing of which I was aware--that water was apparently
dripping on every side of me. It is a strange sensation to lie on your
bed very weak, and very indifferent, and to feel the world turning to
moisture all about you.... My ramshackle habitation had never been a
very strong defence against the outside world. It seemed now to have
definitely decided to abandon the struggle. The water streamed down the
panes of my window opposite my bed. One patch of my ceiling (just above
my only bookcase, confound it!) was coloured a mouldy grey, and from
this huge drops like elephant's tears, splashed monotonously. (Already
_The Spirit of Man_ was disfigured by a long grey streak, and the green
back of Galleon's _Roads_ was splotched with stains.) Some one had
placed a bucket near the door to catch a perpetual stream flowing from
the corner of the room. Down into the bucket it pattered with a hasty,
giggling, hysterical jiggle. I rather liked the companionship of it. I
didn't mind it at all. I really minded nothing whatever.... I sighed my
appreciation of my return to life. My sigh brought some one from the
corner of my room and that some one was, of course, the inevitable Eat.
He came up to my bed in his stealthy, furtive fashion, and looked at me
reproachfully. I asked him, my voice sounding to myself strange and very
far away, what he was doing there. He answered that if it had not been
for him I should be dead. He had come early