The morning had waxed during these investigations. Siegmund had been vaguely aware of the rousing of the house. He was finally startled into a consciousness of the immediate present by the calling of Vera at his door. “There are two letters for you. Father.” He looked about him in bewilderment; the hours had passed in a trance, and he had no idea of his time or place. “Oh, all right,” he said, too much dazed to know what it meant. He heard his daughter going downstairs. Then swiftly returned over him the throbbing ache of his head and his arms, the discordant jarring of his body. “What made her bring me the letters?” he asked himself. It was a very unusual attention. His heart replied, very sullen and shameful: “She wanted to know; she wanted to make sure I was all right.” Siegmund forgot all his speculations on a divine benevolence. The discord of his immediate situation overcame every harmony. He did not fetch in the letters. “Is it so late?” he said. “Is there no more time for me?” He went to look at his watch. It was a quarter to nine. As he walked across the room he trembled, and a sickness made his bones feel rotten. He sat down on the bed. “What am I going to do?” he asked himself. By this time he was shuddering rapidly. A peculiar feeling, as if his belly were turned into nothingness, made him want to press his fists into his abdomen. He remained shuddering drunkenly, like a drunken man who is sick, incapable of thought or action. A second knock came at the door. He started with a jolt. “Here is your shaving-water,” said Beatrice in cold tones. “It’s half past nine.” “All right,” said Siegmund, rising from the bed, bewildered. “And what time shall you expect dinner?” asked Beatrice. She was still contemptuous. “Any time. I’m not going out,” he answered. He was surprised to hear the ordinary cool tone of his own voice, for he was shuddering uncontrollably, and was almost sobbing. In a shaking, bewildered, disordered condition he set about fulfilling his purpose. He was hardly conscious of anything he did; try as he would, he could not keep his hands steady in the violent spasms of shuddering, nor could he call his mind to think. He was one shuddering turmoil. Yet he performed his purpose methodically and exactly. In every particular he was thorough, as if he were the servant of some stern will. It was a mesmeric performance, in which the agent trembled with convulsive sickness. XXVIII Siegmund’s lying late in bed made Beatrice very angry. The later it became, the more wrathful she grew. At half past nine she had taken up his shaving-water. Then she proceeded to tidy the dining-room, leaving the breakfast spread in the kitchen.