Page:The elephant man and other reminiscences.djvu/97

Rh A barrel-organ in the road was playing a trivial waltz, a boy was going by whistling, the world was cheerfully indifferent, while the loneliness of the stricken woman was horrible beyond words.

As the church clock struck nine I knew that the patient was entering the room. I fancied I could hear the shuffle of her slippers and the closing of the door—the last hope of escape—behind her. A chair was moved into position. She was stepping on to the table.

Then came an absolute silence. I knew they were chloroforming her. I fancied that the vapour of that sickly drug was oozing through the ceiling into my room. I was suffocated. I gasped until I thought my chest would burst. The silence was awful. I dared not scream. I would have rung my bell but the thought of the noise it would make held me back.

I lay glaring at the ceiling, my forehead covered with drops of cold sweat. I wrung my fingers together lest all sensation should go out of them.

In a while there came three awful moans from the room above and then once more the moving, of feet was to be heard, whereby I felt that the operation had begun. I could picture the knife, the great cut, the cold callousness of it all. For