Page:Hunger (Hamsun).djvu/122

106 I struck my hands against the wooden frame! "This is the way one dies!" said I to myself. "Now you will die!" and I lay for a while and thought over that I was to die.

Then I start up in bed and ask severely, "If I found the word, am I not absolutely within my right to decide myself what it is to signify?" I could hear myself that I was raving; I could hear it now whilst I was talking. My madness was a delirium of weakness and prostration, but I was not out of my senses. All at once the thought darted through my brain that I was insane. Seized with terror, I spring out of bed again, I stagger to the door, which I try to open, fling myself against it a couple of times to burst it, strike my head against the wall, bewail loudly, bite my fingers, cry and curse

All was quiet; only my own voice echoed from the walls. I had fallen to the floor, incapable of stumbling about the cell any longer.

Lying there I catch a glimpse, high up, straight before my eyes, of a greyish square in the wall, a suggestion of white, a presage—it must be of daylight. I felt it must be daylight, felt it through every pore in my