They are more deadly than Death, for they attack only the immortal part of one, leaving the mortal to save itself while they blight and corrode the spirit.
I am weary. I have not slept for five nights, and I feel as if I shall never sleep again.
I daresay that's partly why I have been weak enough to wish for an end of noise.
It's five o'clock and darkness has set in.
Nobody has been near me, I'm still here, locked up in this little room.
I roam about like a caged animal. I look from the window. The blank back wall of the Antwerp Theatre meets my eye, but a corner of the hotel looks in also, and I can see three tiers of windows, so I hastily move away. In all those rooms there are Germans quartered now. What if they glanced down here and discovered me? I pull the curtains over the window, and move back into the room.
This is Saturday afternoon, October 10th, and all of a sudden a queer thought comes over me.
October 10th is my birthday.
I lie down on the mattress again, and my thoughts begin dreamily to revolve round an extraordinary psychic mystery that I became conscious of when I was little more than a baby in far-away Australia.