wards, I was glad that I had withdrawn the story, for I perceived
that its theme could only be treated adequately in a novel, I
accordingly wrote the novel, which was duly published under the same
title.--A.B.]

I began running my extraordinarily white fingers along the edge of the
sheet. I was doing this quite mechanically when I noticed a look of
alarm in Margaret's face, and I vaguely remembered that playing with the
edge of the sheet was supposed to be a trick of the dying. So I stopped,
more for Margaret's sake than for anything else. I could not move my
head much, in fact scarcely at all; hence it was difficult for me to
keep my eyes on objects that were not in my line of vision as I lay
straight on my pillows. Thus my eyes soon left Margaret's. I forgot her.
I thought about nothing. Then she came over to the bed, and looked at
me, and I smiled at her, very feebly. She smiled in return. She appeared
to me to be exceedingly strong and healthy. Six weeks before I had been
the strong and healthy one--I was in my prime, forty, and had a
tremendous appetite for business--and I had always regarded her as
fragile and delicate; and now she could have crushed me without effort!
I had an unreasonable, instinctive feeling of shame at being so weak
compared to her. I knew that I was leaving her badly off; we were both
good spenders, and all my spare profits had gone into the manufactory;
but I did not trouble about that. I was almost quite callous about that.
I thought to myself, in a confused way: "Anyhow, I shan't be here to see
it, and she'll worry through somehow!" Nor did I object to dying. It may
be imagined that I resented death at so early an age, and being cut off
in my career, and prevented from getting the full benefit of the new
china-firing oven that I had patented. Not at all! It may be imagined
that I was preoccupied with a future life, and thinking that possibly we
had given up going to chapel without sufficient reason. No! I just lay
there, submitting like a person without will or desires to the nursing
of my wife, which was all of it accurately timed by the clock.

I just lay there and watched the gradual changing of the sky, and,
faintly, heard clocks striking and the quiet swish of my wife's dress.
Once my ear would have caught the ticking of our black marble clock on
the mantelpiece; but not now--it was lost to me. I watched the gradual
changing of the sky, until the blue of the sky had darkened so that t