"Spout away," he said aloud.
"I've done my work, and now you can do what you please." He lay still, staring
at the ceiling, the long-pent-up delirium of drink in his veins, his brain on
fire with racing thoughts that would not stay to be considered, and his hands
crisped and dry. He had just discovered that he was painting the face of the
Melancolia on a revolving dome ribbed with millions of lights, and that all his
wondrous thoughts stood embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging
plank, shouting together in his honour, when something cracked inside his
temples like an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and
he was alone in the thick night.
"I'll go to sleep. The room's very dark. Let's light a lamp and see how the
Melancolia looks. There ought to have been a moon."
It was then that Torpenhow heard his name called by a voice that he did not
know,--in the rattling accents of deadly fear.
"He's looked at the picture," was his first thought, as he hurried into the
bedroom and found Dick sitting up and beating the air with his hands.
"Torp! Torp! where are you? For pity's sake, come to me!"
"What's the matter?"
Dick clutched at his shoulder. "Matter! I've been lying here for hours in the
dark, and you never heard me.
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