one has to do is to take things calmly and avoid prejudicial influences, and now, indeed, I really feel better, very much better." He began to feel his side, and the contact was not painful. "Yes, I do not feel it; really I am very much better already." He put out the light and lay down on his side. The small gut evidently was righting, readjusting itself. Suddenly he felt the familiar, old, dragging pain, the same obstinate, steady, serious pain. And in his mouth there was the same familiar foulness. His heart began to throb and his head to grow dull. "My God! my God!" he exclaimed, "again, again, and it never ceases." And suddenly the thing struck him from a new point of view. "Lower gut! inflammation indeed!" he said to himself. "It is no question of the intestines, it is no question of inflammation — it is a question of life and death. Yes, it used to be life, and now it is drifting away, drifting away, and I can't stop it. Yes. Why deceive myself? Is it not quite plain to everyone but myself that I am dying, and it is only a question of weeks, of days— it may happen any moment? It was light, and now it is darkness. Then I was there, and now I am here. Where?" A cold shiver came over him — he stopped breathing. He heard only the beating of his heart
"I shall be no more, what does it mean? There will be nothing at all. For where, indeed, shall I be when I shall be no more? Can it be death? No, I will not die." He sprang up and would have lit the candle, fumbled about with tremulous hands, upset the candle and candlestick on to the floor, and
