When they laid him down again after the sacrament for a minute, he felt comfortable, and again the hope of life sprang up. He began to think about the operation which had been suggested to him. “To live, I want to live,” he said to himself. His wife came in to congratulate him; she uttered the customary words and added⁠—

“It’s quite true, isn’t it, that you’re better?”

Without looking at her, he said, “Yes.”

Her dress, her figure, the expression of her face, the tone of her voice⁠—all told him the same: “Not the right thing. All that in which you lived and are living is lying, deceit, hiding life and death away from you.” And as soon as he had formed that thought, hatred sprang up in him, and with that hatred agonising physical sufferings, and with these sufferings the sense of inevitable, approaching ruin. Something new was happening; there were screwing and shooting pains, and a tightness in his breathing.