...'
He was silent for a time, watching the mists among the distant
precipices change to clouds of light, and drift and dissolve before the
searching rays of the sunrise.
'Yes,' he said at last, 'I am afraid of these anaesthetics and these fag
ends of life. It's life we are all afraid of. Death!--nobody minds just
death. Fowler is clever--but some day surgery will know its duty better
and not be so anxious just to save something . . . provided only that
it quivers. I've tried to hold my end up properly and do my work. After
Fowler has done with me I am certain I shall be unfit for work--and what
else is there for me? . . . I know I shall not be fit for work....
'I do not see why life should be judged by its last trailing thread of
vitality.... I know it for the splendid thing it is--I who have been
a diseased creature from the beginning. I know it well enough not to
confuse it with its husks. Remember that, Gardener, if presently my
heart fails me and I despair, and if I go through a little phase of pain
and ingratitude and dark forgetfulness before the end.... Don't believe
what I may say at the last.... If the fabric is good enough the selvage
doesn't matter. It can't matter. So long as you are alive you are just
the moment, perhaps, but when you are dead then you are all your life
from the first moment to the last.
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