It became unbearable for him to look upon his short, swollen fingers--to feel how short they were and how they were filled with the moisture of death.

And if before, when it was dark, he had had to stir in order not to resemble a corpse, now in the bright, cold, inimical, dreadful light he was so filled with horror that he could not move in order to get a cigarette or to ring for some one.

His nerves were giving way.

Each one of them seemed as if it were a bent wire, at the top of which there was a small head with mad, wide-open frightened eyes and a convulsively gaping, speechless mouth.
He could not draw his breath.
Suddenly in the darkness, amidst the dust and cobwebs somewhere upon the ceiling, an electric bell came to life.

The small, metallic tongue, agitatedly, in terror, kept striking the edge of the ringing cap, became silent--and again quivered in an unceasing, frightened din.