unnaturally prolonged wheezing there followed a shrill, nasty, and as it
were unexpectedly rapid, chime--as though someone were suddenly
jumping forward. It struck two. I woke up, though I had indeed not been
asleep but lying half-conscious.
It was almost completely dark in the narrow, cramped, low-pitched
room, cumbered up with an enormous wardrobe and piles of cardboard
boxes and all sorts of frippery and litter. The candle end that had been
burning on the table was going out and gave a faint flicker from time to
time. In a few minutes there would be complete darkness.
I was not long in coming to myself; everything came back to my mind
at once, without an effort, as though it had been in ambush to pounce
upon me again. And, indeed, even while I was unconscious a point
seemed continually to remain in my memory unforgotten, and round it
my dreams moved drearily. But strange to say, everything that had
happened to me in that day seemed to me now, on waking, to be in the
far, far away past, as though I had long, long ago lived all that down.
My head was full of fumes. Something seemed to be hovering over
me, rousing me, exciting me, and making me restless. Misery and spite
seemed surging up in me again and seeking an outlet. Suddenly I saw
beside me two wide open eyes scrutinising me curiously and persistently.
The look in those eyes was coldly detached, sullen, as it were utterly
remote; it weighed upon me.
A grim idea came into my brain and passed all over my body, as a
horrible sensation, such as one feels when one goes into a damp and
mouldy cellar. There was something unnatural in those two eyes,
beginning to look at me only now. I recalled, too, that during those two
hours I had not said a single word to this creature, and had, in fact,
considered it utterly superfluous; in fact, the silence had for some reason
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