I remember too that certain officers appeared, very officious and inquisitive, and bullied me from my torpor into answering their stupid questions. Sometimes I replied sulkily, and sometimes as they questioned me forgot their very presence, wrapped as I was in a cloud of weary gloom. Then they caught me by the shoulders and shook me, till I cursed them and answered I knew not what. At length they must have abandoned the attempt to pump information from such a dry well, for I was left in peace. But at times I was aware of Worthing's voice clear and decided speaking up for me when I sat dully pondering some enquiry which had been demanded of me, utterly failing to understand its significance or applicability to myself. Indeed it was Worthing who saved me from insanity. For with that incomprehensible slow gloom that had settled upon me, the constant fretting of the officers would have galled me into a savage madness. What I needed was rest and peace, so that the evil black vapour might gradually disperse itself from my spirit, and the light of reality grow clear about me by easy degrees. But the constant questioning puzzled me, and set me searching in the confusion of my mind for clues and traces of the inexplicable enigma which seemed to be dodging me through the dark complexities of my bemused memory. When it baffled me and I sank into a gloomy stupor, all was well; but sometimes I caught a glimpse of the evil thing, and that was like a wrench to a broken limb, an agony that pierced through the vitals like a sword of white fire. I gasped as though my very soul had been split apart with a wedge of lightning. But the pain was too terrible to endure, and foolishly I dropped back into my moping. Yet I know that all the while I was saying to myself, "He is dead, dead, dead!" But the knowledge didn't take root in my mind. It was like a knocking from outside, but I wouldn't open the door. I felt there was something evil there; and, though within all was dark and dreadful, yet I wouldn't open to that unknown thing. I only knew it would stand there and knock till I relented, but stubbornly I refused, and shrank deeper into the darkness that closed me round. All this is but a foolish picture of what I suffered. For everything about me was a kind of weighing chaos where I couldn't reason or distinguish. Only, as I say, at times a vivid light broke through, crueller than the shadows that clung about me; for the light was the light of reality, and reality was more terrible than the spiritual coma that had stupefied my understanding.