... And
then I felt heavy weights on my eyes, and I could not move my jaw. I
shuddered convulsively, and a coin struck the floor and ran till it fell
flat. And the door swiftly opened....
V
Yes, my whole character is changed, within; though externally it may
seem the same. Externally I may seem to have resumed the affections and
the interests which occupied me before my illness and my remarkable
recovery. Yet I am different. Certainly I have lost again the strange
transcendental knowledge which was mine for a few instants. Certainly I
have descended again to the earthly level. All those magic things have
slipped away, except hope. In a sure hope, in a positive faith, I am
waiting. I am waiting for all that magic to happen to me again. I know
that the pain of loneliness, when again I shall see my own body from the
outside, will be exquisite, but--the reward! The reward! That is what is
always at the back of my mind, the source of the calm joy in which I
wait. Externally I am the successful earthenware manufacturer, happily
married, getting rich on a china-firing oven, employing a couple of
hundred workmen, etcetera, who was once given up for dead.
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