voice to the nurse, at a moment when he was quite near me.

"But he was so weak, the poor man!"

"Weakness does not prevent suffering except in the eyes of others,"
said the doctor.

. . . . .

The next morning the drab light of the early day fell upon the faces
and the melancholy funeral lights. The coming of the day, keen and
cold, had a depressing effect upon the atmosphere of the room, making
it heavier, thicker.

A voice in a low apologetic tone for a moment interrupted the silence
that had lasted for hours.

"You mustn't open the window. It isn't good for the dead body."

"It is cold," some one muttered.

Two hands went up and drew a fur piece close. Some one rose, and then
sat down again. Some one else turned his head. There was a sigh.

It was as if they had taken advantage of these few words to come out of
the calm in which they had been concealed. Then they glanced once more
at the man on the bier--motionless, inexorably motionless.

I must have fallen asleep when all at once I heard the church bells
ringing in the grey sky.

After that harassing night there was a relaxation from rigid attention
to the stillness of death, and an inexplicable sweetness in the ringing
of the bells carried me back forcibly to my childhood. I thought of
the countryside where I used to hear the bells ringing, of my native
land, where everything was peaceful and good, and the snow meant
Christmas, and the sun was a cool disk that one could and should look
at.

The tolling of the bells was over. The echo quietly died away, and
then the echo of the echo. Another bell struck, sounding the hour.
Eight o'clock, eight sonorous detached strokes, beating with terrible
regularity, with invincible calm, simple, simple. I counted them, and
when they had ceased to pulsate in the air, I could not help counting
them over again. It was time that was passing--formless time, and the
human effort that defined it and regularized it and made of it a work
as of destiny.

CHAPTER XIV

I was alone. It was late at night, and I was sitting at my table. My
lamp was buzzing like summer in the fields. I lifted my eyes. The
stars studded the heavens above. The city was plunged at my feet. The
horizon escaped from nearby into eternity. The lights and shadows
formed an infinite sphere around me.

I was not at ease that night. I was a prey to an immense distress. I
sat as if I had fallen into my chair. As on the fi