His turn again. He cannot! Let him get out of this! Let him away! This is not to be borne. Unendurable this. What are they reading? Why have they chosen these words. "Who shall ascend?" They know his misery, then! They know the depths that he is in! Hateful that they should know it, hateful, insufferable, horrible. They see his state and have chosen words that mean his state. He is exposed before them. Let him away! Let him get out of this! They shall not know! His turn. He cannot, cannot. They are watching. They are waiting. Do they see how his face is working? Do they see how he twists and twists his hands? His turn. Ah, ah, he is in the depths, the depths! He is physically, actually down, down--struggling, gasping, suffocating. All this room and these about him stand as it were above him--watching him, waiting for him, knowing his misery. He is sinking, sinking. He is in black and whirling darkness. There is shouting in his ears. Let him away! Let him go! Some one says: "Essie, dear." Essie--strong and loud and clear, with tremendous emphasis upon the first word as though her strong young voice performed its meaning: "_Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in._" He gets to his feet, overturning his chair. He stumbles away, with blind eyes, with groping hands. "Not that door!" cries Essie and runs to him. "Here's the door. Here's the stairs. Look, here's your candle." He blunders up. He blunders to his room. He extinguishes the candle. Let him have the dark, the dark! He throws off his clothes, tearing them from him as though they were his agonies. God, if he could but tear these tortures so! He flings himself upon the bed and trembles there and clutches there and thrusts the sheet between his teeth to stay him crying aloud. Inchoate thoughts that rend him, rend him! Unmeaning cries that with the sheet he stifles. What, what consumes him now? He cannot name it. What tortures him? He does not know. Writhe, writhe in the bed; and now it is the sea, and now the Infirmary ward, and now the coffee-shop, and now the parlour. Ah, beat down, beat down these torments! Ah, sit up and stare into the darkness and rid the spirit, rid the mind, of all these shapes and scenes that press about the pillow. Has he slept? Is he sleeping? Why suffers he? What racks him? In God's name what? In pity, in pity what? "_Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in._" Ah, ah! CHAPTER III TRIAL OF MR. WRIFORD I