Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/214

 laughed, that hour with Maradick at the club, lights, scents, the cold fog drowning his mouth, his nose, his eyes—then chill space, a roaring wind and silence....

How strange after that—and hours afterwards it seemed although it must have been seconds—to find that he was still living, that his arms were aching as though they were one extended toothache, and that he was still holding to those tufts of grass. He had a kind of marvel at his endurance, and now, suddenly, a wonder as to why he was doing this. Was it worth while? How stupid this energy! How much better to let himself go and to sleep, to sleep. How delicious to sleep and be rid of the ache, the cold, the clammy fog!

With that, one of the grass tufts to which he was clinging lurched slightly, and his whole soul was active in its energy to preserve that life that but now he had thought to throw away. With a struggle to which he would have supposed he could not have risen he drew his body up against the slope so that the earth to which he was clinging might the better restrain his weight. Then resting there, his fingers digging deep into the soil of the cliff, his head pressed against the rock, he uttered a prayer:

"O Lord, help me now. I have a life that has been of little use to the world, but I have, in this very day, seen better the uses to which I may put it. Help me from this, give me strength to live