VIII

accomplished⁠—the last I was to perform on earth⁠—I noticed nothing: I was simply in a hurry. But, having given the little fagot into the hands of a sleepy girl, I said to myself suddenly: “Now I am dead!” I began suddenly as they say of young children, to “notice.” A weight that I had never felt before seemed to fall away from me. I noticed, precisely, that the girl clerk was sleepy, that, as she reached up one hand to take the parcel over the brass caging, she placed the other over her mouth to hide a yawn.

And out on the pavement it was most curious what had befallen the world. It had lost all interest: but it had become fascinating, vivid. I had not, you see, any senses left, but my eyesight and hearing. Vivid: that is the word. I watched a newsboy throw his papers down an area, and it appeared wonderfully interesting to discover that that was how one’s papers got into the house. I watched a milkman go up some doorsteps to put a can of milk beside a boot-scraper and I was wonderfully interested to see a black cat follow him. They were the clearest moments I have ever spent upon the earth⁠—those when I was dead. They were so clear because nothing else weighed on my attention but just those little things. It was an extraordinary, a luxuriant feeling. That, I imagine, must have been how Adam and Eve felt before they had eaten of the fruit of knowledge.

Supposing I had tacitly arranged with myself that I would die in the street, I think I should still have walked home simply to dally longer with that delightful feeling of sheer curiosity. For it was sheer curiosity to see how this world, which I had never looked at, really performed before utterly unbiased eyes.

That was why, when I got home, I sent away the messenger that brought to me Edward Burden’s letter; there was to be no answer. Whatever Burden’s query might be I was not going to commit myself to any other act. My last was that of sending off the parcel to you.