_Sunday._--The way it beats! Sometimes very fast and heavy and emphatic, like a bad barrage of 5.9's. Fortunately my watch has a second-hand, so that I can time it--forty-five to the half-minute, ninety-five to the full minute. Then I know that the end is very near; everyone knows that the normal rate for a healthy adult heart is seventy-two. Then sometimes it goes very slow, very dignified and faint, as when some great steamer glides in at slow speed to her anchorage, and the engines thump in a subdued and profound manner very far away, or as when at night the solemn tread of some huge policeman is heard, remote and soft and dilated--I mean dilatory, or as when--But you see what I mean. _Monday._--How was it, I wonder, that all this was hidden from me for so long? And now what am I to do? I am a doomed man. With a heart like this I cannot last long. I have resigned my clubs; I have given up my work. I can think of nothing but this dull pain, this heavy throbbing at my side. My work--ha! Yesterday I met another young doctor at tea. He asked me if there was any "murmur." I said I did not know--no one had told me. But after tea I went away and listened. Yes, there was a murmur; I could hear it plainly. I told the young doctor. He said that murmurs were not considered so important nowadays. What matters is "the reaction of the heart to work." By that test I am doomed indeed. But the murmur is better. _Tuesday._--I have told Anton Gregorovitch Gregorski. He says he has a heart too. _Wednesday._--I have been learning things to-day. I am worse even than the doctor thought. In a reference book in the dining-room there is a medical dictionary. It says: "Dilatation leads to dropsy, shortness of breath and blueness of the face." I have got some of those already. I have never seen a face so blue. It is like the sea in the early morning. _Thursday._--The heart is bigger again to-day--about an inch each way. The weight of it is terrible to carry.... I have to take taxis.... This evening it was going at thirty-two to the minute.... _Friday._--Last night, when I tried to count the beats, I could not find it.... It must have stopped.... Anton Gregorovitch says it is the end.... This is my last entry.... _Saturday._--My face is very blue. It is like a forget-me-not ... it is like a volume of _Hansard_.... I shall go to see the doctor as I promised ... he can do nothing, but it will interest him to see how much bigger the heart has grown in the last few days.... No more.... _Sunday._--The doctor said it was much better.... It is undilated again.... After all I am not going to die. But the reaction to work is still bad. This evening I make it sixty to the minute.... _Monday._--This morning's count was seventy-two. It is terrible.... A.P.H. * * * * * [Illustration: _Sympathetic Old Lady._ "AND WHEN YOU WENT DOWN FOR THE THIRD TIME THE WHOLE OF YOUR PAST LIFE OF COURSE FLASHED BEFORE YOUR EYES?"