by coughing or blowing his nose.

After a long time he said, "Your heart's dilated. You want a complete rest.
Don't work. Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't eat. Don't do anything. Take
plenty of exercise. Sit perfectly still. Don't mope. Don't rush about. Take
this before and after every meal. Only don't have any meals." I laughed at
him. I knew my heart was perfectly sound, much sounder than most men's. I
went home. I didn't even have the prescription made up.

_Saturday._--Now comes the tragic thing. _That very night I realised that
he was right._ There _is_ something wrong with my heart. It is too long. It
is too wide. It is too thick. It is out of place. It would be difficult to
say _exactly_ where the measurements are wrong, but one has a sort of
_sense_ ... you know?... One can feel that it is too large.... A swollen
feeling.... Somehow I never felt this before; I never even felt that it was
there ... but now I always know that it is there--trying to get out.... I
put my hand on it and can feel it definitely expanding--like a football
bladder. Sometimes I think it wants to get out at my collar-bone; sometimes
I think it will blow out under my bottom rib; sometimes some other way. It
is terrible....

I have had the prescription made up.

_Sunday._--The way it beats! Sometimes very fast and heavy and emphatic,
like a bad barrage of 5.9's. Fortunately my watch has a second-hand, so
that I can time it--forty-five to the half-minute, ninety-five to the full
minute. Then I know that the end is very near; everyone knows that the
normal rate for a healthy adult heart is seventy-two. Then sometimes it
goes very slow, very dignified and faint, as when some great steamer glides
in at slow speed to her anchorage, and the engines thump in a subdued and
profound manner very far away, or as when at night the solemn tread of some
huge policeman is heard, remote and soft and dilated--I mean dilatory, or
as when--But you see what I mean.

_Monday._--How was it, I wonder, that all this was hidden from me for so
long? And now what am I to do? I am a doomed man. With a heart like this I
cannot last long. I have resigned my clubs; I have given up my work. I can
think of nothing but this dull pain, this heavy throbbing at my side. My
work--ha! Yesterday I met another young doctor at tea. He asked me if there
was any "murmur." I said I did not know--no one had told me. But after tea
I went away and listened. Yes, there was a murmur;