Page:Garshin - A Red Flower (1911).djvu/16

14 me?" were the thoughts that came into his head, and suddenly, with an unusual vividness, there appeared before him the events of the past month, and he understood that he was ill and the nature of his illness. A whole row of disconnected thoughts, words and actions came into his memory, causing him to shudder in his entire body. "But this is ended, thank God, this is done," he muttered, and fell asleep again.

An open window with iron bars faced a little lane between the large buildings and a stone inclosure. No one ever entered this lane, which was thickly overgrown with wild bushes and weeds, magnificently blooming at that time of the year. Behind the bushes, just opposite the window, was a high fence bordering on a large garden; over this fence appeared the tall treetops, bathed in moonlight.

To the right stood the white hospital building with lighted, iron-barred windows; to the left the white, deaf wall of the dead-house, made even more brilliant by the moonlight. The moonlight, entering through the window grating of our patient's room, illuminated a part of the bedding on the floor and the harassed, pale face of a man with