But it was harder, now that the end was near. His eyes were hazy, and his thoughts unclear. He could move his arms a little, clumsily, but feeling was gone from them. The rest of his body was lost to him. Sometimes he seemed to feel his stomach and his hips, but the sensation was mostly an illusion offered by higher nervous centers, like the "ghost-arm" that an amputee continues to feel. The wires were down, and he was cut off from himself. * * * * * He lay wheezing on the hospital bed, in his own room, in his own rented flat. Gaunt and unshaven, gray as winter twilight, he lay staring at the white net curtains that billowed gently in the breeze from the open window. There was no sound in the room but the sound of breathing and the loud ticking of an alarm clock. Occasionally he heard a chair scraping on the stone terrace next door, and the low mutter of voices, sometimes laughter, as the servants of the Keith mansion arranged the terrace for late afternoon guests. With considerable effort, he rolled his head toward Martha who sat beside the bed, pinch-faced and weary. "You ought to get some sleep," he said. "I slept yesterday. Don't talk, Donny. It tires you." "You ought to get more sleep. You never sleep enough. Are you afraid I'll get up and run away if you go to sleep for a while?" She managed a brittle smile. "There'll be plenty of time for sleep when ... when you're well again." The brittle smile fled and she swallowed hard, like swallowing a fish-bone. He glanced down, and noticed that she was squeezing his hand spasmodically. There wasn't much left of the hand, he thought. Bones and ugly tight-stretched hide spotted with brown. Bulging knuckles with yellow cigaret stains. My hand. He tried to tighten it, tried to squeeze Martha's thin one in return. He watched it open and contract a little, but it was like operating a remote-control mechanism. Goodbye, hand, you're leaving me the way my legs did, he told it. I'll see you again in hell. How hammy can you get, Old Donegal? You maudlin ass. "Requiescat," he muttered over the hand, and let it lie in peace. Perhaps she heard him. "Donny," she whispered, leaning closer, "won't you let me call the priest now? Please." He rattled a sigh and rolled his head toward the window again. "Are the Keiths having a party today?" he asked. "Sounds like they're moving chairs out on the terrace." "Please, Donny, the priest?" He let his head roll aside and closed his eyes, as if asleep. The bed shook slightly as she quickly caught at his wrist to feel for a pulse. "If I'm not dying, I don't need a priest," he said sleepily. "That's not right," she scolded softly. "You know that's not right, Donny. You know better."