I learn myself again, word by word.
It is she, naturally, who tells me I was wounded in the chest and hip, and that I lay three days forsaken--ragged wounds, much blood lost, a lot of fever, and enormous fatigue.
"You'll get up soon," she says.
I get up ?--I, the prostrate being?
I am astonished and afraid.
Marie goes away.

She increases my solitude, step by step, and for a long time my eyes follow her going and her absence.
In the evening I hear a secret and whispered conference near the bed of the sick man in the brown vest.

He is curled up, and breathes humbly.
They say, very low: "He's going to die--in one hour from now, or two.

He's in such a state that to-morrow morning he'll be rotten.

He must be taken away on the moment." At nine in the evening they say that, and then they put the lights out and go away.