At nine o'clock in the morning it was more real to him than any real thing; it even assumed an abominable personality; it was an all-compelling, all-consuming power that sucked from him his time, his life, his energy, and for six days out of the seven required of him his soul.

That at the same time it provided him with the means of bodily subsistence only added to the horror of the thing.

It was as if "Rickman's", destroyer and preserver, renewed his life every quarter day that it might draw in, devour, annihilate it as before.

There was a diabolical precision in the action of the machine that made and unmade him.
And yet, with its rhythm of days and weeks, it was in its turn part of a vaster system, whose revolutions brought round a longer pause--when for three days his soul would be given back to him.

The only thing that kept him up at this moment was the blessed hope of the Bank holiday.
While young Keith was still lying very sick and miserable in his bed, the elder Rickman, in his villa residence at Ilford in Essex, was up and eager for the day.