The next evening the visitor returned once more and knocked upon the shutter; again he was received by the old man who led him within. The returned wayfarer still sat at the table writing his treatise. Again he appeared scarcely to have changed his posture. The pile of writing had grown greater and greater. In mute bewilderment the man from the street gazed upon him. The worn and haggard countenance of him who wrote was convulsed with tears. Yet although they dripped upon the white paper, even as the pen traversed it, he refrained not an instant from his task.
As the unhappy man from the street again sought the outer darkness, he said with a sinking heart: “When he stops writing I am sure he will die!”
On the next evening he presented himself at the shutter for the fourth time.
“How is he now?” he cried to the old man. “Does he still live?”
“You may enter,” said the old man; and in the darkness the man from the street could not observe the secret smile that was about his lips.
Ever writing as before, the returned wayfarer had now a face that was radiant with joy. As he continued to fill one page upon another, his lips began to move in a kind of low crooning chant. When the watcher from the threshold caught the first sounds of his voice, he remembered with one of those pangs with which reason confronts that which lies beyond it, the day upon which he and his boon companions had taken him upon the sea in a boat.
“I don’t know how it will end, I don’t know how it will end!” cried the man as he entered the streets. His emotion was wrought so highly that he walked the streets until dawn.
Yet again on the evening of the fifth day he returned, and with secret, fearful steps he came to the threshold of the little room. He who sat there was writing still. His cheeks had now sunk into his jaws; his eyes that formerly were so large and bright lacked lustre; the slender fingers were moving painfully; the gaunt face had almost the composure of death.
The watcher crept forth again to the streets, and walked them in a kind of madness. “I begin to wish he would die,” he said as he took his way. “It is dreadful, it is dreadful! Yes, I wish he would die.”
Yet on the evening of the sixth day the man came again and knocked upon the shutter.