Midnight.--Another change in him. I had been to see Miss Westenra,
whom I found much better, and had just returned, and was standing at
our own gate looking at the sunset, when once more I heard him
yelling. As his room is on this side of the house, I could hear it
better than in the morning. It was a shock to me to turn from the
wonderful smoky beauty of a sunset over London, with its lurid lights
and inky shadows and all the marvellous tints that come on foul clouds
even as on foul water, and to realize all the grim sternness of my own
cold stone building, with its wealth of breathing misery, and my own
desolate heart to endure it all. I reached him just as the sun was
going down, and from his window saw the red disc sink. As it sank he
became less and less frenzied, and just as it dipped he slid from the
hands that held him, an inert mass, on the floor. It is wonderful,
however, what intellectual recuperative power lunatics have, for
within a few minutes he stood up quite calmly and looked around him. I
signalled to the attendants not to hold him, for I was anxious to see
what he would do. He went straight over to the window and brushed out
the crumbs of sugar. Then he took his fly box, and emptied it
outside, and threw away the box. Then he shut the window, and
crossing over, sat down on his bed. All this surprised me, so I asked
him, "Are you going to keep flies any more?"
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