and I could accomplish nothing, not the faintest whisper.

I had no home, no shelter, no place in the world, no share in life. I
was cast out. The changeless purposes of nature had ejected me from
humanity. It was as though humanity had been a fortified city and the
gates had been shut on me, and I was wandering round and round the
unscalable smooth walls, and beating against their stone with my hands.
That is a good simile, except that I could not move. Of course if I
could have moved I should have gone to my wife. But I could not move. To
be quite exact, I could move very slightly, perhaps about an inch or two
inches, and in any direction, up or down, to left or right, backwards or
forwards; this by a great straining, fatiguing effort. I was stuck there
on the surface of the world, desolate and undone. It was the most cruel
situation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivable
physical torture. I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged my
state, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the most
agonized martyr, the foulest criminal. I would have given anything, made
any sacrifice, to be once more within the human pale, to feel once more
that human life was not going on without me.

There was a knocking below. My wife left that body on the bed, and came
to the window and put her head out into the nocturnal, gas-lit silence
of Trafalgar Road. She was within a foot of me--and I could do nothing.

She whispered: "Is that you, Mary?"

The voice of the servant came: "Yes, mum. The doctor's been called away
to a case. He's not likely to be back before five o'clock."

My wife said, with sad indifference: "It doesn't matter now. I'll let
you in."

She went from the room. I heard the opening and shutting of the door.
Then both women returned into the room, and talked in low voices.

My wife said: "As soon as it's light you must ..." She stopped and
corrected herself. "No, the nurse will be back at seven o'clock. She
said she would. She will attend to all that. Mary, go and get a little
rest, if you can."

"Aren't you going to put the pennies on his eyes, mum?" the servant
asked.

"Ought I?" said my wife. "I don't know much about these things."

"Oh, yes, mum. And tie his jaw up," the servant said.

_His_ eyes! _His_ jaw! I was terribly angry, in my desolation. But it
was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm. Could they
not understand, would they never understand,