“You have been over an hour,” she said, still more troubled when she found her voice shaking. She had no idea what alarmed her. “Ay,” returned Siegmund. He went into the dining-room and dropped into his chair, with his head between his hands. Vera followed him nervously. “Will you have anything to eat?” she asked. He looked up at the table, as if the supper laid there were curious and incomprehensible. The delirious lifting of his eyelids showed the whole of the dark pupils and the bloodshot white of his eyes. Vera held her breath with fear. He sank his head again and said nothing. Vera sat down and waited. The minutes ticked slowly off. Siegmund neither moved nor spoke. At last the clock struck midnight. She was weary with sleep, querulous with trouble. “Aren’t you going to bed?” she asked. Siegmund heard her without paying any attention. He seemed only to half hear. Vera waited awhile, then repeated plaintively: “Aren’t you going to bed, Father?” Siegmund lifted his head and looked at her. He loathed the idea of having to move. He looked at her confusedly. “Yes, I’m going,” he said, and his head dropped again. Vera knew he was not asleep. She dared not leave him till he was in his bedroom. Again she sat waiting. “Father!” she cried at last. He started up, gripping the arms of his chair, trembling. “Yes, I’m going,” he said. He rose, and went unevenly upstairs. Vera followed him close behind. “If he reels and falls backwards he will kill me,” she thought, but he did not fall. From habit he went into the bathroom. While trying to brush his teeth he dropped the tooth-brush on to the floor. “I’ll pick it up in the morning,” he said, continuing deliriously: “I must go to bed—I must go to bed—I am very tired.” He stumbled over the door mat into his own room. Vera was standing behind the unclosed door of her room. She heard the sneck of his lock. She heard the water still running in the bathroom, trickling with the mysterious sound of water at dead of night. Screwing up her courage, she went and turned off the tap. Then she stood again in her own room, to be near the companionable breathing of her sleeping sister, listening. Siegmund undressed quickly. His one thought was to get into bed. “One must sleep,” he said as he dropped his clothes on the floor. He could not find the way to put on his sleeping-jacket, and that made him pant. Any little thing that roused or thwarted his mechanical action aggravated his sickness till his brain seemed to be bursting. He got things right at last, and was in bed. Immediately he lapsed into a kind of unconsciousness. He would have called it sleep, but such it was not. All the time he could feel his brain working ceaselessly, like a machine running with unslackening rapidity. This went on, interrupted by little flickerings of consciousness, for three or four hours. Each time he had a glimmer of consciousness he wondered if he made any noise.