It was the punishment that he had brought upon himself, some fearful nervous disease, the result of his long indulgence of vice, his vile submission to the brute that was to destroy his reason; some collapse of all his faculties, beginning first with that which was highest, most sensitive—­his art—­spreading onward and downward till he should have reached the last stages of idiocy.  It was Nature inexorably exacting.  It was the vast fearful engine riding him down beneath its myriad spinning wheels, remorselessly, irresistibly.

The dreadful calamities that he had brought upon himself recoiled upon his head, crushing him to the dust with their weight of anguish and remorse:  Ida Wade’s suicide, his father’s death, his social banishment, the loss of his art, Hiram Wade’s lawsuit menacing him with beggary, and now this last, this approaching insanity.  It was no longer fire driving out fire; the sense of all these disasters seemed to come back upon him at once, as keen, as bitter as when they had first befallen.  He had told himself that he did not believe in a hell.  Could there be a worse hell than this?

But all at once, without knowing why, moved by an impulse, a blind, resistless instinct, Vandover started up in bed, raising his clasped hands above him, crying out, “Oh, help me!  Why don’t you help me?  You can if you only will!” Who was it to whom he had cried with such unerring intuition?  He gave no name to this mysterious “You,” this strange supernatural being, this mighty superhuman power.  It was the cry of a soul in torment that does not stop to reason, the wild last hope that feels its own helplessness, that responds to an intuition of a force outside of itself—­the force that can save it in its time of peril.

Trembling, his hands still clasped above him, Vandover waited for an answer, waited for the miracle.  In the tortured exalted state of his nerves he seemed suddenly possessed of a sixth sense; he fancied that he would know, there in that room, in a few seconds, while yet his hands remained clasped above his head.  It was his last hope:  if this failed him there was nothing left.  Still he waited; he felt that he should know when the miracle came, that he would suddenly be filled with a sense of peace, of quiet joy.  Still he waited—­there was nothing, nothing but the vast silence, the unbroken blackness of the night, a night that was to last forever.  There was no answer, nothing but the deaf silence, the blind darkness.  But in a moment he felt that the very silence, the very lack of answer, was answer in itself; there was nothing for him.  Even that vast mysterious power to which he had cried could not help him now, could not help him, could not stay the inexorable law of nature, could not reverse that vast terrible engine with its myriad spinning wheels that was riding him down relentlessly, grinding him into the dust.  And afterward?  After the engine had done its work, when that strange other time should come, that other life, what then?  No, not even then, nothing but outer darkness then and the gnashing of teeth, nothing but the deaf silence, nothing but the blind darkness, nothing but the unbroken blackness of an eternal night.