“Yes, I’m coming,” he answered quite docile.
He seemed to wander about and knock against things as he came. He dropped heavily into bed.
“Are you sleepy now?” I asked.
“I dunno—I shall be directly,” he replied.
“What’s up with you?” I asked.
“I dunno,” he answered. “I am like this sometimes, when there’s nothing I want to do, and nowhere I want to go, and nobody I want to be near. Then you feel so rottenly lonely, Cyril. You feel awful, like a vacuum, with a pressure on you, a sort of pressure of darkness, and you yourself—just nothing, a vacuum—that’s what it’s like—a little vacuum that’s not dark, all loose in the middle of a space of darkness, that’s pressing on you.”
“Good gracious!” I exclaimed, rousing myself in bed. “That sounds bad!”
He laughed slightly.
“It’s all right,” he said, “it’s only the excitement of London, and that little man in the park, and that woman on the seat—I wonder where she is to-night, poor devil—and then Lettie. I seem thrown off my balance.—I think really, I ought to have made something of myself——”
“What?” I asked, as he hesitated.