"Good-night," I said slowly.
"Good-night," he answered gravely. "I hope your head will be better in
the morning."
Outside the door of old Mrs. Cromer's room I paused. I had a passionate
and overwhelming desire to go and tell her the truth. I was in need of
counsel. I craved advice. I felt that nothing in the whole world could
ever be right again. The future terrified me, and all the people in
it--Walter Markham, mother, father.
I felt I would give anything to go and lay my burden on someone else's
shoulder.
If I felt like a mosquito at all, it was when it feels and fears the
approach of winter.
*XIII*
I woke at midnight with an extraordinary feeling that I was the last
person left alive on earth, a consciousness of desolation and isolation
terrifying and indescribable. I used to get it when I was a child, and
I would have gone into a lion's cage for company. I believe it is some
form of nerve pressure medical men can't explain.