He took up his candle once more, kissed the portrait in the broken frame
with intense fervour a dozen times over, and then went up gloomily into
his own bedroom. There he did not attempt to undress, but merely pulled
off his boots, lay down in his clothes upon the bed, and hastily blew
out the candle. For a long time he lay tossing and turning in
unspeakable terror; but at last, after perhaps two hours or so, he fell
into a troubled sleep, and dreamed a hideous nightmare, in which
somebody or other in shadowy outlines was trying perpetually to tear him
away by main force from poor pale and weeping Hetty.
It was daylight when Arthur woke again, and he lay for some time upon
his bed, thinking over his last night's scare, which seemed much less
serious, as such things always do, now that the sun had risen upon it.
After a while his mind got round to the energy question; and, as he
thought it over once more, the conviction forced itself afresh upon him
that he was right upon the matter after all, and that if he was going
mad there was at least method in his madness. So firmly was he convinced
upon this point now (though he recognized that that very certainty might
be merely a symptom of his coming malady) that he got up hurriedly,
before the lodging-house servant came to clean up his little
sitting-room, so as to rescue his crumpled foolscap from the waste-paper
basket. After that, a bath and breakfast almost made him laugh at his
evening terrors.
All the morning Arthur Greatrex sat down at his table again, working in
the algebraical calculations which he had omitted from his paper
overnight, and finishing it in full form as if for presentation to a
learned society. But he did not mean now to offer it to any society: he
had a far deeper and more personal interest in the matter at present
than that. He wanted to settle first of all the question whether he was
going mad or not. Afterwards, there would be plenty of time to settle
such minor theoretical problems as the general physical constitution of
the universe.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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