It was the most cruel situation that you can imagine; far worse, I think, than any conceivable physical torture.  I am perfectly sure that I would have exchanged my state, then, for the state of no matter what human being, the most agonized martyr, the foulest criminal.  I would have given anything, made any sacrifice, to be once more within the human pale, to feel once more that human life was not going on without me.

There was a knocking below.  My wife left that body on the bed, and came to the window and put her head out into the nocturnal, gas-lit silence of Trafalgar Road.  She was within a foot of me—­and I could do nothing.

She whispered:  “Is that you, Mary?”

The voice of the servant came:  “Yes, mum.  The doctor’s been called away to a case.  He’s not likely to be back before five o’clock.”

My wife said, with sad indifference:  “It doesn’t matter now.  I’ll let you in.”

She went from the room.  I heard the opening and shutting of the door.  Then both women returned into the room, and talked in low voices.

My wife said:  “As soon as it’s light you must ...”  She stopped and corrected herself.  “No, the nurse will be back at seven o’clock.  She said she would.  She will attend to all that.  Mary, go and get a little rest, if you can.”

“Aren’t you going to put the pennies on his eyes, mum?” the servant asked.

“Ought I?” said my wife.  “I don’t know much about these things.”

“Oh, yes, mum.  And tie his jaw up,” the servant said.

His eyes! His jaw!  I was terribly angry, in my desolation.  But it was a futile anger, though it raged through me like a storm.  Could they not understand, would they never understand, that they were grotesquely deceived?  How much longer would they continue to fuss over that body on the bed while I, I, the person whom they were supposed to be sorry for, suffered and trembled in dire need just behind them?

A ridiculous bother over pennies!  There was only one penny in the house, they decided, after searching.  I knew the exact whereabouts of two shillings worth of copper, rolled in paper in my desk in the dining-room.  It had been there for many weeks; I had brought it home one day from the works.  But they did not know.  I wanted to tell them, so as to end the awful exacerbation of my nerves.  But of course I could not.  In spite of Mary’s superstitious protest, my wife put a penny on one eye and half-a-crown on the other.  Mary seemed to regard this as a desecration, or at best as unlucky.  Then they bound up the jaw of that body with one of my handkerchiefs.  I thought I had never seen anything more wantonly absurd.  Their trouble in straightening the arms—­the legs were quite straight—­infuriated me.  I wanted to weep in my tragic vexation.  It seemed as though tears would ease me.  But I could not weep.

The servant said:  “You’d better come away now, mum, and rest on the sofa in the drawing-room.”