For months he had awakened
each morning after such a night
and had so lain like a crucified thing.
As he watched the painful flickering
of the damp and smoking wood and
coal he remembered this and thought
that there had been a lifetime of such
awakenings, not knowing that the
morbidness of a fagged brain blotted
out the memory of more normal days
and told him fantastic lies which were
but a hundredth part truth. He could
see only the hundredth part truth, and
it assumed proportions so huge that
he could see nothing else. In such
a state the human brain is an infernal
machine and its workings can only be
conquered if the mortal thing which
lives with it--day and night, night
and day--has learned to separate its
controllable from its seemingly
uncontrollable atoms, and can silence
its clamor on its way to madness.
Antony Dart had not learned this
thing and the clamor had had its
hideous way with him. Physicians
would have given a name to his
mental and physical condition. He
had heard these names often--applied
to men the strain of whose lives had
been like the strain of his own, and
had left them as it had left him--
jaded, joyless, breaking things. Some
of them had been broken and had
died or were dragging out bruised and
tormented days in their own homes
or in mad-houses. He always shuddered
when he heard their names,
and rebelled with sick fear against
the mere mention of them. They
had worked as he had worked, they
had been stricken with the delirium
of accumulation--accumulation--
as he had been.
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