Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/200

 mingled with the drawings,—columns of magical figures which could never be added up, because they seemed to lengthen themselves at will with serpent elasticity,—a mad procession of confused notes in addition and subtraction, in division and multiplication, danced before him. And the world of anxious faces watched yet more impatiently. All was dark again; the merciless pain in loins and thighs had returned with sharp consciousness of the fever, and the insufferable heat and skull-splitting headache—heavy blankets and miserable helplessness—and the recollection of the very, very small pill-box on the table. Then it seemed to him there were other pill-boxes—three! nine! twenty-seven! eighty-one! one hundred and sixty-two! one hundred and sixty-two very small pill-boxes. He seemed to be wandering in a cemetery, under blazing sunlight and in a blinding glare