He was not unlike the man from Chicago who fainted when he came into the pure air but revived again when somebody held a rotten herring under his nose.
It seemed, as a matter of fact, as if death had for a moment withdrawn from the room before this last grotesque phase of egoism. Poor overworked death in the third year of the world war! Coarsened and banalised by the crude slaughter of engines of destruction and by the horribly laconic press announcements. Talk no more of the twinkling evening star and the purifying effect of suffering or of clear vision at the moment of farewell. What an age! when men have grown so empty and hard that they even know no fear. It is as if they no longer existed themselves, but only their machines and their money. Egoism driven to extremes turns into something almost like its opposite. It dies the death of cold, around a soulless mass of cold metal. Life—spontaneous happy and suffering life—is nothing, its end cannot therefore be anything either....
Peter was lying with ruined kidneys and was on the point of collapse. But anything so fine as death, the good old death, he had never met, and was never to meet.
He just fell to pieces.
A first milder paroxysm had come already. Laura suddenly seized Stellan’s arm and pointed to the bed. Panic made her mass of flesh tremble. It was an ugly, cowardly fright:
“Come, let us go!” she panted and pulled her skirts round her as if she had seen a mouse. “I want to get away from this at once!”
Peter had sunk back on the pillow. He moaned heavily and spasms passed over his shapeless face, whilst one hand groped about on his chest and the other contracted like a claw.
But Stellan pulled himself together with a furious effort. His face grew cold and hard. This was the last chance. Now the last card was being played. He pushed Laura away and bent quickly over Peter with a low but penetrating whisper:
“You are not going to steal from us and make a scandal, Peter. The slightest effort will be the end. Let us separate as friends!”
Peter struggled with his growing weakness. He forced the words out with a tremendous effort: