the vicinity of the fire. He
drew himself up on to it and rested among the piled-up cushions.
Perhaps, if he waited, exercising patience, sleep might mercifully
visit him and deliver him from this intolerable confusion of mind.
Deliver him, too, from that hideous apprehension of universal
mutilation, of maimed purposes, maimed happenings, of a world peopled
by beings maimed as he was himself, but after a more subtle and
intimate fashion, a fashion intellectual or moral rather than merely
physical, so that they had to him, just now, an added hatefulness of
specious lying, since to ordinary seeing they appeared whole, while
whole they truly and actually were not.

Sternly he tried to shake himself free of these morbid fancies, to
bring his imagination under control and force himself once again to
join hands with reality and common sense. And, to this end, he turned
his attention to the consideration of practical matters. He dwelt on
the details of the coaling and revictualing of his yacht, upon the
objective of the voyage upon which he proposed to start a few days
hence. He reviewed the letters which must be written and the
arrangements which must be made with a view to putting his cousin
legally in possession of the villa, the rent of which he proposed still
to pay to her husband. This suite of rooms he would retain for his own
use. That was necessary, obligatory. Yet, why must he retain it? He did
not propose to return and live here at any future time. This episode
was over--or rather, had it not simply failed of completion? Was it
not, like all the rest, maimed, lopped off ungainly, docked? Then,
where came in the obligation to reserve these rooms? He could not
remember. Yet he knew that he was compelled to do so, because--because----

And, once again, Richard's power of concentration broke down. Once
again his thought eluded him, becoming tangled, fugitive, not to be
grasped. While, like swarms of shrill squeaking bats disturbed in the
recesses of some age-old cavern by sudden intrusion of voices and of
lights, half-formed visions, half-formed ideas, once again, flapped
duskily about him, torturing in their multiplicity alike to his senses
and his brain. He fought with them, striving to beat them off in a
madness of disgust, half suffocated by the fanning of their foul and
stifling wings. Then, exhausted by the conflict, he stumbled and fell,
while they closed down on him. And he, losing consciousness, slept.

That