The Stratagem and Other Stories

life; the alternation was but systole and diastole, the throb of his envenomed pulse, the reflection in con- sciousness of his blood-beat. I became conscious of his intense longing for death to end the torture. The blood circulated ever slower and more painfully; I could feel him hoping for the end. This dreadful rose-dawn suddenly greyed and sick- ened with doubt. Hope sank to its nadir; fear rose like a dragon, with leaden wings. Suppose, thought he, that after all death does not end me! I cannot express this conception. It is not that the heart sank, it had nowhither to sink; it knew itself im- mortal, and immortal in a realm of unimagined pain and terror, unlighted by one glimpse of any other light than that pale glare of hate and of pestilence. This thought took shape in these words: I AM THAT I AM. One cannot say that the blasphemy added to the horror; rather it was the essence of the horror. It was the gnashing of the teeth of a damned soul. III The demon-shape, which I now clearly recognized as that which had figured in my last “dream” at Cam- bridge, seemed to gulp. At that instant a convulsion shook the dying man and a coughing eructation took the “demon.” Instantly the whole theory dawned on me, that this “demon” was an imaginary personification of the disease. Now at once I understood demonology, from Bodin and Weirus to the moderns, without a flaw. But was it imaginary or was it real? Real enough to swal- low up the “sane” thought! At that instant the old Arthur reappeared. “I am not the monster! I am Arthur Blair, of Fettes and Trinity. I have passed through a paroxysm.”