" Allison was listless and apathetic, yet comparatively free
from pain.
Life, for him, had ebbed back to the point where the tide must either
cease or turn. He knew neither hunger nor thirst nor weariness; only the
great pause of soul and body, the sense of the ultimate goal.
One by one, he meditated upon the things he used to care for. Isabel
came first, but her youth and beauty had ceased to trouble or to beckon.
His father had gone on ahead. The delusion still persisted, but he spoke
of it no more. Even the violin did not matter now. He remembered the
endless hours he had spent at work, almost every day of his life for
years, and to what end? In an instant, it had been rendered empty,
purposeless, and vain--like life itself.
Occasionally a new man came to look at his hand; not from the city now,
but from towns farther inland. The examinations were painful, of course,
but he made no objections. After the man had gone, he could count the
slow, distinct pulsations that marked the ebbing of the pain, but never
troubled himself to ask either the doctor or the nurse what the new man
had said about it.
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