He had to move two or three bottles to get at one with a large neck and stopper, which he shook up and loosened several pieces of dull looking white crystal. One of these pieces he turned out on to the table by his letters, hesitated, and jerked out another. Then, setting down the bottle, he crossed the room to where a table-filter stood on a bracket, and returned with the large carafe and a tumbler, which he filled nearly full of water. These two he set down on the table, and taking up one of the lumps of crystal he dropped it into the glass, taking care that no water should sprinkle over the side.
He held it up to his lamp to see how quickly it would dissolve, set it down again, and dropped in the second piece before beginning to tap the table with his nails, watching the crystalline pieces the while.
“Quick and painless, I hope,” he said quietly. “Bah! I can bear a little pain.”
He turned in his chair with a laugh, which froze upon his lips as he saw his shadow on a panel a few yards away, the weird aspect of the moving figure having so terrible an effect upon his shattered nerves that he sprang from his seat and fled to the wall, where he stood breathing hard.
“Yes, I know,” he cried wildly. “Only my shadow, but it is coming back—I cannot—it is more than man can bear.”
There was a wild despair in his utterance, and he shrank away more and more toward the doorway leading to the further room. Then, as if making a supreme effort, he drew himself up erect, with his lips moving rapidly in a low murmur, stepped firmly toward the table and seized the glass.