'What do you mean by bearing it well?' said the Doctor, in the tone in which he would have questioned a patient.
'Living—as—as I thought I should when I made up my mind to life instead of death,' said Leonard; 'but all that went away. I let it slip, and instead came everything possible of cowardice, and hatred, and bitterness. I lost my hold of certainty what I had done or what I had not, and the horror, the malice, the rebellion that used to come on me in that frightful light white silent place, were unutterable! I wish you would not have me among you all, when I know there can hardly be a wicked thought that did not surge over me.'
'To be conquered.'
'To conquer me,' he said, in utter lassitude.
'Stay. Did they ever make you offend wilfully?'
'There was nothing I could offend in.'
'Your tasks of work, for instance.'
'I often had a savage frantic abhorrence of it, but I always brought myself to do it, and it did me good; it would have done more if it had been less mechanical. But it often was only the instinct of not degrading myself like the lowest prisoners.'
'Well, there was your conduct to the officials.'
'Oh! one could not help being amenable to them, they were so kind. Besides, these demons never came over me except when I was alone.'