er living, and what she had done, go on
with it."

But he did not want to. He wanted to give up.

"But you can go on with your painting," said the will in him. "Or else
you can beget children. They both carry on her effort."

"Painting is not living."

"Then live."

"Marry whom?" came the sulky question.

"As best you can."

"Miriam?"

But he did not trust that.

He rose suddenly, went straight to bed. When he got inside his bedroom
and closed the door, he stood with clenched fist.

"Mater, my dear--" he began, with the whole force of his soul. Then he
stopped. He would not say it. He would not admit that he wanted to die,
to have done. He would not own that life had beaten him, or that death
had beaten him. Going straight to bed, he slept at once, abandoning
himself to the sleep.

So the weeks went on. Always alone, his soul oscillated, first on the
side of death, then on the side of life, doggedly. The real agony
was that he had nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to say, and WAS
nothing himself. Sometimes he ran down the streets as if he were mad:
sometimes he was mad; things weren't there, things were there. It made
him pant. Sometimes he stood before the bar of the public-house where he
called for a drink. Everything suddenly stood back away from him. He
saw the face of the barmaid, the gobbling drinkers, his own glass on the
slopped, mahogany board, in the distance. There was something between
him and them. He could not get into touch. He did not want them; he did
not want his drink. Turning abruptly, he went out. On the threshold he
stood and looked at the lighted street. But he was not of it or in it.
Something separated him. Everything went on there below those lamps,
shut away from him. He could not get at them. He felt he couldn't touch
the lamp-posts, not if he reached. Where could he go? There was nowhere
to go, neither back into the inn, or forward anywhere. He felt stifled.
There was nowhere for him. The stress grew inside him; he felt he should
smash.

"I mustn't," he said; and, turning blindly, he went in and drank.
Sometimes the drink did him good; sometimes it made him worse. He ran
down the road. For ever restless, he went here, there, everywhere. He
determined to work. But when he had made six strokes, he loathed the
pencil violently, got up, and went away, hurried off to a club where he
could play cards or billiards, to a place where he could flirt with a
barmaid who was no more