From a deadening of all his faculties¹, of all his perceptives, to stupor²; from stupor to a delirium³ of weariness, in which so little as a ring on his finger was a conscious burden; from weariness to fever and a recrudescence of those mental and bodily pains he strove so frenziedly to forget; from this state at last to the yielding stage of exhaustion⁴, and Tuke, the man not so much hurt as overwrought, fell into a profound slumber⁵ and got his restoration of it.

 

For long, before this came, he was aware only of a close darkness—a darkness that seemed a cabined horror of himself, were it not assured and comforted by a presence that, in supreme⁶ moments of torture, he grew to know he could depend upon for pitiful help and a silent passion of sympathy. This presence, swift and invisible, was always at hand when he most needed it—soothing, murmuring; taking upon itself the responsibility of questions he could not answer; brushing away with snowflakes the stinging wasps⁷ that settled on his shoulder. It was so prompt, so gentle, so full of resource, that he came to think that if he could only put to it the supreme problem that vexed⁸ him beyond endurance, it would resolve it at once with a quiet laugh, and so secure him everlasting⁹ peace. But, whenever he came to the point of explanation, he found that the problem itself had eluded¹⁰ him, and he could not remember what road it was that his tired brain had gone astray on. At length, ceasing to struggle, he floated inanimate on the tide against which he had fought to make head, and was borne by it into a

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