CHAPTER XII
THE FIGHT
IT was not so many hours, so many days, so many weeks, so many months—it was a numberless succession of periods so loosely defined one from the other that they merged without perceptible demarcation into a single whole that, in itself intangible, held no concrete idea of time.
To Varge, it was as though he were in the midst of a space, drear and dead, that had no boundary, that above and below and on either hand was limitless, through which he had journeyed and must journey without hope of coming to the end. What was behind him was not a consciousness of distance travelled, spurring weariness to new life with the cheering knowledge that part of the road was traversed; it was, instead, only a dull consciousness that he had walked for an æon of time as upon a path which was but the circumference of a circle, where with each step taken the distance before him was remorselessly identical with what it had been before.
The earlier mornings, the later evenings, the disappearing snow as he marched to and fro across the penitentiary yard marked a change of season—but that was all. It was a change, purely impersonal, utterly extraneous, that held nothing of interest, nothing in common with him or those within the four grey walls.
There had been breaks in the monotony—not pleasant
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