1
THE ward in which Felix lay was a great room with a hundred beds in it, only a few feet apart.
It was a restful place, after Canal street. Even the delirium of a man on the other side of the room was, after the first night, easy to disregard. Those yells had no relation to Felix’s life; at least, they were not Eddie Silver’s yells. He did not have to wake up and join in any painful festivities with that man.... In their utter aloofness from his own life, those yells seemed actually soothing, and he went to sleep to their music as to a lullaby.