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Then I drop down to the bottom of a deep well. I feel myself falling, falling, until with a great shock I touch the bottom. And there I lie motionless in the dark.
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When I open my eyes there is a great deal of light; the windows are open, the sun is pouring in; I know that outside there is the sea. Beside my bed sits a doctor with a gray beard, feeling my pulse. Under the light intermittent pressure of his fingers my pulse seems to grow quieter; I can see the doctor's head giving little nods as he counts the beats.
“Sixty-five. Excellent, excellent!” The doctor pats my hand gently and encouragingly. “That is first-rate. We are quite well again.”
Then I hear some one weeping softly, and I know it is my mother. I try to turn and smile at her, but my head will not move. It is like a ball of lead sunk in the pillow. Immediately afterwards—or have years passed?—I hear some one say: “Here is the Professor!” And again the same doctor with the gray beard comes in and smiles at me.
Before sitting down beside the bed he turns to my mother: “Has she not yet asked about her child?” My mother shakes her head and presses her handkerchief to her eyes. Then the doctor sits down beside my bed and strokes my forehead and speaks to me.
He speaks about a baby. He repeats a name over and over again—perhaps it is Tioka. Tioka? Who is Tioka? I watch his beard moving up and down, and do not know what he is saying. The ball of lead on my pillow rolls from side to side with a dull and heavy ache.
My mother weeps bitterly: “Oh, doctor, do not let her die!”
The white spiders are there again, running over the coverlet. And I fall once more, down, down, down, to the bottom of the well.