burning thirst... After
a while he broke the bread into small bits--not only because he was
hungry, but because he was determined to eat this bitter meal to the
last crumb. When he had finished he felt mysteriously sealed to
indifference.

The nurse came in for the tray and he asked her to switch off the
light. He lay for hours, open-eyed, in the gloom, while wraithlike
memories materialized and vanished as mysteriously. Somehow the
incidents of his life nearest in point of time seemed the remotest.
Only his youth lay within easy reach, and his childhood nearest of
all. He was traveling back ... back ... perhaps in the end

oblivion would wrap him in its healing mantle and he would
wait to be made perfect and whole again in the flaming
crucible of a new birth... Gradually the mists of
remembrance faded, lost their outline ... became confused,
and he slept.

He awoke with a shiver. A piercing scream was curdling the silence.
From the other side of the thin partition came shrieks, curses, mad
laughter. He heard the heavy tramp of attendants in the hallway ...
doors quickly opened and slammed shut. ... There followed the sounds
of scuffling, the reeling impact of several bodies against the wall
... then blows of shuddering softness, one last shriek ... dead
silence!

He sat up in bed--alive and quivering. Was this the rebirth that the
swooning hours had held in store for him? ... Quickly life came
flooding back. Indifference fell from him. In one blinding flash his
new condition was revealed. His life had been a futile compromise. He
had sowed passivity and he had reaped a barren harvest of negative
virtues. He would compromise again, and he would be passive again, and
he would bow his neck to authority ... but from this moment on he
would wither the cold fruits of such enforced planting in a steadily
rising flame of understanding. He knew now the meaning of the word
"revelation."

CHAPTER XI

They kept Fred Starratt in bed for two weeks, and one morning when the
sun was flooding through the skylight with soul-warming radiance they
brought him his clothes and he knew that the prologue to the drama of
his humiliation was over. He crawled to his feet and looked down upon
his body wasted by days of enforced idleness and fasting. He dropped
back upon the bed, exhausted. The sun, striking him squarely,
gradually flamed him with feeble energy. He straightened himself and
dressed slowly.