"Yes, I do not feel it,—really it is much better now."
He put out the light, and lay down on his side. The blind gut is improving, and being sucked in. Suddenly he experienced his old, dull, gnawing pain,—it was stubborn, calm, and serious. In the mouth was the same familiar, abominable taste. His heart was pinched, his head was dizzy.
"My God, my God!" he muttered, "again and again, and it will never stop."
Suddenly the matter presented itself to him from an entirely different side.
"The blind gut, the kidney!" he said to himself. "It is not a question of the blind gut, nor of the kidney, but of life and—death. Yes, there was life, and it is going away and away, and I cannot retain it. Yes. Why should I deceive myself? Is it not evident to all outside of me that I am dying? The question is only in the number of weeks and days—perhaps now. There was light, but now it is darkness. I was here until now, but now I am going thither! Whither?"
He was chilled, and his breath stopped. He heard only the beats of his heart.
"I shall be no longer, so what will there be? There will be nothing. But where shall I be, when I am no longer? Can it be death? No, I will not die."
He leaped up and wanted to light a candle; he groped about with trembling hands, dropped the candle with the candlestick on the floor, and again fell back on the pillow.
"What's the use? It makes no difference," he said to himself, looking with open eyes into the darkness. "Death, yes, death. And not one of them knows, or wants to know, and they have no pity. They are playing." (He was hearing beyond the door the peal of voices and of a ritornelle.) "It makes no difference to them, but they, too, will die. Foolishness! First I, and they
