Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/93

 always in the one room. I shouldn’t be in the way if any one came. I’ve been afraid, Mr. Kirkwood, that perhaps you feared to come lest, whilst I was not very well, it might have been an inconvenience to us. Please don’t think that. I shall never—see either friends or strangers unless it is absolutely needful.”

There was silence.

“You do feel much better, I hope?” fell from Sidney’s lips.

“Much stronger. It’s only my mind; everything; is so dark to me. You know how little patience I always had. It was enough if any one said, ‘You must do this,’ or ‘You must put up with that,'—at once I resisted. It was my nature; I couldn’t bear the feeling of control. That’s what I’ve had to struggle with since I recovered from my delirium at the hospital, and hadn’t even the hope of dying. Can you put yourself in my place, and imagine what I have suffered?”

Sidney was silent. His own life had not been without its passionate miseries, but the modulations of this voice which had no light of countenance to aid it raised him above the