He murmured to himself
in a hoarse voice, "I wonder if there's any bread here," looked vaguely
about him, then dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. He
became aware he had not eaten anything for many hours.
It occurred to him that no one could understand him so well as his
sister. In the most sceptical heart there lurks at such moments, when
the chances of existence are involved, a desire to leave a correct
impression of the feelings, like a light by which the action may be seen
when personality is gone, gone where no light of investigation can ever
reach the truth which every death takes out of the world. Therefore,
instead of looking for something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour or
so of sleep, Decoud was filling the pages of a large pocket-book with a
letter to his sister.
In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep out his weariness,
his great fatigue, the close touch of his bodily sensations. He began
again as if he were talking to her. With almost an illusion of her
presence, he wrote the phrase, "I am very hungry.
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