Methought the well-loved dead, who had loved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated: galled was my inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of despair about the future.
Motive there was none why I should try to recover or wish to live; and yet quite unendurable was the pitiless and haughty voice in which Death challenged me to engage his unknown terrors.

When I tried to pray I could only utter these words: "From my youth up Thy terrors have I suffered with a troubled mind." Most true was it.
On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.
I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.
One evening--and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I got up--I dressed myself, weak and shaking.

The solitude and the stillness of the long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly white beds were turning into spectres--the coronal of each became a death's-head, huge and sun-bleached--dead dreams of an elder world and mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes.

That evening more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate was of stone, and Hope a false idol--blind, bloodless, and of granite core.

I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling as they were.