Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (80 page)

just
trivial
dreaming,
almost
death
----
"
and
the
voice
died
off
into

a
whisper.
He
closed
his
eyes,
leaning
back
into
his
comer.

I
saw
Vronski
clutch
him.
"Remember,"
Vronski
shouted,
"try
to remember!
You're
back
in
three-dimensional
space
and
one-dimensional
time
now—and
with
me.
I'm
Vronski—Nicholas
Vronski— your
old
friend.
You
remember
our
talks,
our
speculations,
our experiments!"

There
was
no
response,
not
even
a
turn
of
the
head.
But
one
of those
flashes
I
had
actually
no
right
to
came
to
me,
and
I
understood
that
Mantravers,
back
now
in
conditions
he
had
long
escaped, found
himself
so
caged
and
limited
that
he
felt
helpless.
After
the intensity,
the
difference,
the
power
and
liberty
he
had
known,
the experiences
of
our
existence
were
as
the
unreal
phantasmagoria
of
a dream.
"It's
all
leaving
me,"
he
murmured
once.
"I'm
forgetting,
forgetting.
It's
awful,
awful.
It
was
always
difficult
to
hold
it.
I
can't hold
it
now.
Yet
I
had
a
flash,
a
minute—four
years,
as
you
think
it here."

The
taxi,
escaping
a
hundred
deaths,
stopped
suddenly,
and
then Vronski,
grabbing
my
arm
painfully
hard
as
we
got
out,
whispered something
about
"get
all
he
says,
make
notes,
remember
every
word, hold
on
to
him,"
and
somehow
we
were,
all
three,
inside
the
house.

Such
is
my
brief
recollection,
half
hazy,
half
vivid,
of
that
frightful journey.
So
perturbed
and
upset
I
was
that
I
only
vaguely
recall
that Vronski
provided
a
meal
of
sorts,
put
Mantravers
to
bed,
and
fixed me
up
in
the
dressing-room
with
only
a
door
between.
It
all
happened with
the
rapidity
of
that
cinema
stunt-picture
almost;
these
little details
of
preparation,
eating
a
meal,
providing
me
with
pyjamas, paper
and
pencil,
and
a
dozen
other
necessary
matters,
all
went
past with
extraordinary
swiftness,
as
though,
perhaps,
I
hardly
noticed them
attentively
enough
to
take
them
in.
It
seemed
but
a
few minutes,
when
he
stood
at
the
door,
giving
me
final
injunctions before
he
left
me
alone
for
the
night.
"I'm
best
out
of
sight,
in
the background
anyhow,"
he
whispered.
"Ring
for
all
you
want.
My manservant
is
used
to
anything
at
any
hour.
I
must
go
now.
I
must notify
the
authorities,
of
course,
for
one
thing.
Keep
your
door
ajar, and
watch
and
listen.
Be
ready.
Your
position,
your
privilege,
your duty
.
.
."
The
words
poured
out
feverishly
jumbled,
there
was
so much
he
wanted
to
say.
He
shrugged
his
shoulders,
and
adding
that he
would
look
in
again
at
midnight,
he
was
gone.

He
did
come
back
at
midnight,
a
couple
of
hours
later,
and
entering
my
room
on
tiptoe,
seemed
relieved
to
hear
that
there
had
been no
waking
yet,
hardly
a
movement
of
the
sleeping
body
even.
"He may
sleep
for
hours,"
he
told
me,
"for
days,
even
for
weeks,
like others
before
him.
But
I
doubt
it.
His
case
is
not
of
that
sort.
He'll wake
up
right
enough
before
too
long,
and
you
must
be
the
first person
he
sees."