No one knows when! What ?" "Nothing," answered Silence, "nothing." "But you did say something." "Nothing, nonsense.

I say: to-morrow, at one o'clock in the afternoon!" There was a sudden, acute pain in his heart--and he understood that he would have neither sleep, nor peace, nor joy until that accursed black hour standing out of the dial should have passed.

Only the shadow of the knowledge of something which no living being could know stood there in the corner, and that was enough to darken the world and envelop him with the impenetrable gloom of horror.

The once disturbed fear of death diffused through his body, penetrated into his bones.
He no longer feared the murderers of the next day--they had vanished, they had been forgotten, they had mingled with the crowd of hostile faces and incidents which surrounded his life.

He now feared something sudden and inevitable--an apoplectic stroke, heart failure, some foolish thin little vessel which might suddenly fail to withstand the pressure of the blood and might burst like a tight glove upon swollen fingers.
His short, thick neck seemed terrible to him.