ng worse than death. Yesterday I put the
question to myself: "What would become of me if, in this foreign town,
I suddenly forgot my name and where I lived, and wandered on and on in
darkness without knowing where I was going?"

These are sick fancies. Besides, in such a case that would happen to
my body which has already happened to my soul; for in a moral sense I
do not know where I dwell,--I walk in darkness, aimlessly, in a kind
of madness. I am afraid of everything, except of death. Strictly
speaking, I have a strange sensation as if it were not that I am
afraid, but as if fear dwelt in me, as a separate being,--and I
tremble; I cannot bear darkness now. In the evening I go out and walk
in the streets, lighted by electric lamps, until I am thoroughly
tired. If I met anybody I knew, I should escape, if to the other end
of the world; but crowds have become a necessity to me. When the
streets are getting empty I feel terrified. The thought of night fills
me with nameless fear. And how long they seem, these nights!

I have continually a metallic taste in my mouth. I felt it for the
first time that night when I came home and found Kromitzki waiting
for me; the second time I felt it when Pani Celina told me the "great
news." What a day! I had gone to ask how Aniela was, when the doctor
had seen her for the second time. There was not the slightest
suspicion in my mind; I did not understand anything even when Pani
Celina said: "The doctor says that those are purely nervous symptoms,
and have nothing to do with her state."

Seeing that I did not understand, she said, with a certain
uneasiness:--

"I must tell you the great news."

And she told me the "great news." When I heard it I felt the metallic
taste in my mouth, and a cold sensation in my brain, exactly as I had
felt that evening I met Kromitzki unexpectedly. I went into my room.
I remember among other things that I felt an immense desire to
laugh. That ideal being, for whom even Platonic love seemed to be
impermissible, and who instead of "love" used the word "friendship!" I
felt a desire to laugh, and at the same time to dash my head against
the wall.

I preserved nevertheless a mechanical self-possession. It came from
the consciousness that everything was over and done with; that I
must go--that there was nothing for it but to go. That consciousness
transformed me into an automaton, doing by routine everything that
was necessary for my departure. I was even