and with the torment the consciousness of inevitable, imminent ruin.
The expression of his face when he had said "Yes" was terrible. On pronouncing this yes he looked her straight in the face, and with extraordinary quickness, considering his weakness, he turned over on one side and cried: "Go away, go away, leave me."
XII.
From that moment commenced the shrieking fit which lasted for three days, and was so terrible that it was impossible to hear it without horror even through two doors. When he had answered his wife he understood that he was lost, that there could be no return to health, that the end had come, quite the end, and although his doubt was now settled, yet doubt it remained.
"Wo! Wo! Wo!" he cried in various intonations. He had begun with crying: "I won't, I won't," and then continued to cry the syllable "Wo" only.
These three days, during which time did not exist for him, he was struggling in that black sack into which an invisible, irresistible power had dragged him. He fought as a condemned criminal in the hands of the executioner fights, knowing that he cannot save himself, and every moment he felt that, notwithstanding all his struggles and exertion, he was drawing nearer and nearer to that which terrified him so. He felt that his torment consisted in his being dragged into this black hole, and still more in his being unable to creep through it. He was
