Eugene realized vaguely that it wasn't rest that he needed so much as peace of mind. He was not tired. He was merely nervously excited and apprehensive. He began to sleep badly, to have terrifying dreams, to feel that his heart was failing him. At two o'clock in the morning, the hour when for some reason human vitality appears to undergo a peculiar disturbance, he would wake with a sense of sinking physically. His pulse would appear to be very low, and he would feel his wrists nervously. Not infrequently he would break out in a cold perspiration and would get up and walk about to restore himself. Angela would rise and walk with him. One day at his easel he was seized with a peculiar nervous disturbance--a sudden glittering light before his eyes, a rumbling in his ears, and a sensation which was as if his body were being pricked with ten million needles. It was as though his whole nervous system had given way at every minute point and division. For the time being he was intensely frightened, believing that he was going crazy, but he said nothing. It came to him as a staggering truth that the trouble with him was over-indulgence physically; that the remedy was abstinence, complete or at least partial; that he was probably so far weakened mentally and physically that it would be very difficult for him to recover; that his ability to paint might be seriously affected--his life blighted. He stood before his canvas holding his brush, wondering. When the shock had completely gone he laid the brush down with a trembling hand. He walked to the window, wiped his cold, damp forehead with his hand and then turned to get his coat from the closet. "Where are you going?" asked Angela. "For a little walk. I'll be back soon. I don't feel just as fresh as I might." She kissed him good-bye at the door and let him go, but her heart troubled her. "I'm afraid Eugene is going to get sick," she thought. "He ought to stop work." CHAPTER X