His sight reported to him that he was all alone, in a place which might in justice be called either a room or a chimney.  Each wall of the room was about a metre and a half wide and about ten metres high.  The walls were straight, white, smooth, with no openings, except one through which food was brought to Max.  An electric lamp was burning brightly on the ceiling.  It was burning all the time, so that Max did not know now what darkness was.  There was no furniture in the room, and Max had to lie on the stone floor.  He lay curled together, as the narrowness of the room did not permit him to stretch himself.

His sense of hearing reported to him that until the day of his death he would not leave this room....  Having reported this, his hearing sank into inactivity, for not the slightest sound came from without, except the sounds which Max himself produced, tossing about, or shouting until he was hoarse, until he lost his voice.

Max looked into himself.  In contrast to the outward light which never went out he saw within himself impenetrable, heavy, and motionless darkness.  In that darkness his love and faith were buried.

Max did not know whether time was moving or whether it stood motionless.  The same even, white light poured down on him—­the same silence and quiet.  Only by the beating of his heart Max could judge that Chronos had not left his chariot.  His body was aching ever more from the unnatural position in which it lay, and the constant light and silence were growing ever more tormenting.  How happy are they for whom night exists, near whom people are shouting, making noise, beating drums; who may sit on a chair, with their feet hanging down, or lie with their feet outstretched, placing the head in a corner and covering it with the hands in order to create the illusion of darkness.

Max made an effort to recall and to picture to himself what there is in life; human faces, voices, the stars....  He knew that his eyes would never in life see that again.  He knew it, and yet he lived.  He could have destroyed himself, for there is no position in which a man can not do that, but instead Max worried about his health, trying to eat, although he had no appetite, solving mathematical problems to occupy his mind so as not to lose his reason.  He struggled against death as if it were not his deliverer, but his enemy; and as if life were to him not the worst of infernal tortures—­but love, faith, and happiness.  Gloom in the Past, the grave in the Future, and infernal tortures in the Present—­and yet he lived.  Tell me, John N., where did he get the strength for that?

He hoped.

THE OCEAN

CHAPTER I

A misty February twilight is descending over the ocean.  The newly fallen snow has melted and the warm air is heavy and damp.  The northwestern wind from the sea is driving it silently toward the mainland, bringing in its wake a sharply fragrant mixture of brine, of boundless space, of undisturbed, free and mysterious distances.