In the ring of light under the lamp was an open book, an inkstand and a pen.  A nurse—­not his nurse—­was standing by the table, her fingers idly drumming the cloth, and near her a man in evening dress.  Perhaps a doctor.  They were conversing in low tones.  In the middle of the ward was an open stove, and the restless flames were reflected in all the brass knobs of the bedsteads and in some shining metal balls which hung from an unlighted chandelier.  His part of the ward was almost in darkness.  A confused, subdued murmur of little coughs, breathings, rustlings, was continually audible, and sometimes it rose above the conversation at the table.  He noticed all these things.  He became conscious, too, of a strangely familiar smell.  What was it?  Ah, yes!  Acetic acid; his mother used it for her rheumatics.

Suddenly, magically, a great longing came over him.  He must see his mother, or his brothers, or his little sister—­someone who knew him, someone who belonged to him.  He could have cried out in his desire.  This one thought consumed all his faculties.  If his mother could but walk in just now through that doorway!  If only old Spot even could amble up to him, tongue out and tail furiously wagging!  He tried to sit up, and he could not move!  Then despair settled on him, and weighed him down.  He closed his eyes.

The doctor and the nurse came slowly up the ward, pausing here and there.  They stopped before his bed, and he held his breath.

‘Not roused up again, I suppose?’

‘No.’

‘H’m!  He may flicker on for forty-eight hours.  Not more.’

They went on, and with a sigh of relief he opened his eyes again.  The doctor shook hands with the nurse, who returned to the table and sat down.

Death!  The end of all this!  Yes, it was coming.  He felt it.  His had been one of those wasted lives of which he used to read in books.  How strange!  Almost amusing!  He was one of those sons who bring sorrow and shame into a family.  Again, how strange!  What a coincidence that he—­just he and not the man in the next bed—­should be one of those rare, legendary good-for-nothings who go recklessly to ruin.  And yet, he was sure that he was not such a bad fellow after all.  Only somehow he had been careless.  Yes, careless; that was the word ... nothing worse....  As to death, he was indifferent.  Remembering his father’s death, he reflected that it was probably less disturbing to die one’s self than to watch another pass.

He smelt the acetic acid once more, and his thoughts reverted to his mother.  Poor mother!  No, great mother!  The grandeur of her life’s struggle filled him with a sense of awe.  Strange that until that moment he had never seen the heroic side of her humdrum, commonplace existence!  He must write to her, now, at once, before it was too late.  His letter would trouble her, add another wrinkle to her face, but he must write; she must know that he had been thinking of her.