He seemed to hear dimly, beyond the wall of the
mysterious world into whose regions he was ever more deeply passing,
sentences, vague, without human agency, accusing Martin of sins and
infidelities and riotous living. Sometimes he was tempted to go
further into this and challenge Martin's accusers, but fear held him
back. Martin had been a good son since his return to England, yes,
he had, and he had forsaken his evil ways and was going to be with
his father now until the end, his last refuge against loneliness.
Every one else had left him or was leaving him, but Martin was
there. Martin hadn't deceived him, Martin was a good boy . . . a
good boy . . . and then, as it seemed to him, with Martin's hand in
his own he would pass off into his world of strange dreams and
desperate prayer and hours of waiting, listening, straining for a
voice . . .
During that last night before New Year's Eve an hour came to him
when he seemed to be left utterly alone. Exhausted, faint, dizzy
with want of sleep and food, he knelt before his bed; his room
seemed to be filled with devils, taunting him, tempting him,
bewildering and blinding him.
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