Through the
night he kept his thoughts fixed on death in its aspect of
repose, of eternal oblivion. And herein he had found solace.
The next night it was the same. Moving about among common needs
and occupations, he knew not a moment's cessation of heart-ache,
but when he lay down in the darkness a hopeful summons whispered
to him. Night, which had been the worst season of his pain, had
now grown friendly; it came as an anticipation of the sleep that
is everlasting.
A few more days, and he was possessed by a calm of spirit such as
he had never known. His resolve was taken, not in a moment of
supreme conflict, but as the result of a subtle process by which
his imagination had become in love with death. Turning from
contemplation of life's one rapture, he looked with the same
intensity of desire to a state that had neither fear nor hope.
One afternoon he went to the Museum Reading-room, and was busy
for a few minutes in consultation of a volume which he took from
the shelves of medical literature. On his way homeward he entered
two or three chemists' shops.
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