clue to his thoughts would be of immense help to me; but he would not
rise. For a moment or two he looked very sad, and said in a sort of
far-away voice, as though saying it rather to himself than to me:--
All over! all over! He has deserted me. No hope for me now unless I do
it for myself! Then suddenly turning to me in a resolute way, he said:
Doctor, won t you be very good to me and let me have a little more
sugar? I think it would be good for me.
And the flies? I said.
Yes! The flies like it, too, and I like the flies; therefore I like
it. And there are people who know so little as to think that madmen do
not argue. I procured him a double supply, and left him as happy a man
as, I suppose, any in the world. I wish I could fathom his mind.
* * * * *
_Midnight._--Another change in him. I had been to see Miss Westenra,
whom I found much better, and had just returned, and was standing at our
own gate looking at the sunset, when once more I heard him yelling. As
his room is on this side of the house, I could hear it better than in
the morning. It was a shock to me to turn from the wonderful smoky
beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights and inky shadows
and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds even as on foul
water, and to realise all the grim sternness of my own cold stone
building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own desolate heart
to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was going down, and from
his window saw the red disc sink. As it sank he became less and less
frenzied; and just as it dipped he slid from the hands that held him, an
inert mass, on the floor. It is wonderful, however, what intellectual
recuperative power lunatics have, for within a few minutes he stood up
quite calmly and looked around him. I signalled to the attendants not to
hold him, for I was anxious to see what he would do. He went straight
over to the window and brushed out the crumbs of sugar; then he took his
fly-box, and emptied it outside, and threw away the box; then he shut
the window, and crossing over, sat down on his bed. All this surprised
me, so I asked him: Are you not going to keep flies any more?
No, said he; I am sick of all that rubbish! He certainly is a
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