When Harkness was first conscious of this he tried to move his knee, but he was so tightly wedged in that he could not stir. Then he could not move for another reason, that he was transfixed with apprehension. It was exactly as though a gigantic hand had slipped forward and enclosed him in its grasp, congealing him there, stiffening him into helpless clay--and this was the apprehension of immediate physical pain. He had known all his days that he was a coward about physical pain, and that was always the form of human experience that he had shrunk from observing, compelling himself sometimes because he so deeply hated his cowardice, to notice, to listen, but suffering after these contacts acute physical reactions. Only once or twice in his life had pain actually come to him. He did not mind it so deeply were it part of illness or natural causes, but the deliberate anticipation of it--the doctor's "Now look out; I am going to hurt," the dentist's "I may give you a twinge for a moment," these things froze him with terror. During the war, when he had offered his service, this was the thing that from the clammy darkness of the night leapt out upon him. He had done his utmost to serve at the front, and it was in no way his own fault when he was given clerical work at home. He had tried again and again, but his poor sight, his absurd inside that was always wrong in one fashion or another, these things had held him back--and behind it all was there not a faint ring of relief, something that he dared not face lest it should reveal itself as cowardice? There had been times at the dentist's and one operation. That operation had been a slight one, but it had involved for several weeks the withdrawing of tubes and the probing with bright shining instruments. Every morning for several hours before this withdrawing and probing he lay panting in bed, the beads of sweat gathering on his forehead, his hands clutching and unclutching, saying to himself that he did not care, that he was above it, beyond it . . . but closer and closer and closer the animal came, and soon he was at his bedside, and soon bending over him, and soon his claws were upon his flesh and the pain would swoop down, like a cry of a discoverer, and the voice would be sharper and sharper, the determination not to listen, not to hear, not to feel weaker and weaker, until at length out it would come, the defeat, the submission, the scream for pity.