furnishings of her room--though,
of course, at least treble this amount would be needed to cover its
cost.-- But a fig for such nonsense! He knew but one legitimate use to
make of the unexpected little windfall, and that was, to put it by for
a rainy day. "At my age, in my position, I OUGHT to have fifty pounds
in the bank!"--times without number he had said this to himself, with a
growing impatience. But he had not yet managed to save a halfpenny.
Thrive as the practice might, the expenses of living held even pace
with it. And now, having got its cue, his brain started off again on
the old treadmill, reckoning, totting up, finding totals, or more often
failing to find them, till his head was as hot as his feet were cold.
To-day he could not think clearly at all.

Nor the next day either. By the time he reached home he was conscious
of feeling very ill: he had lancinating pains in his limbs, a chill
down his spine, an outrageous temperature. To set out again on a round
of visits was impossible. He had just to tumble into bed.

He got between the sheets with that sense of utter well-being, of
almost sensual satisfaction, which only one who is shivering with fever
knows. And at first very small things were enough to fill him with
content: the smoothness of the pillow's sleek linen; the shadowy light
of the room after long days spent in the dusty glare outside; the
possibility of resting, the knowledge that it was his duty to rest;
Polly's soft, firm hands, which were always of the right
temperature--warm in the cold stage, cool when the fever scorched him,
and neither hot nor cold when the dripping sweats came on. But as the
fever declined, these slight pleasures lost their hold. Then he was
ridden to death by black thoughts. Not only was day being added to day,
he meanwhile not turning over a penny; but ideas which he knew to be
preposterous insinuated themselves in his brain. Thus, for hours on end
he writhed under the belief that his present illness was due solely to
the proximity of the Great Swamp, and lay and cursed his folly in
having chosen just this neighbourhood to build in. Again, there was the
case of typhoid he had been anxious about, prior to his own breakdown:
under his LOCUM, peritonitis had set in and carried off the patient. At
the time he had accepted the news from Polly's lips with
indifference--too ill to care. But a little later the knowledge of what
it meant broke over him, and he suffered the tort