On the stairs of the hotel, while going up to his room, the strong smell of cooking onions came suddenly to his nostrils.

It was delicious.

Vandover breathed in the warm savour with long sighs, closing his eyes; a great feebleness overcame him.

He asked himself how he could get through the next twelve hours.
An hour later he went to bed, hiccoughing from the water he had been drinking all day.

By this time he had torn the paper from one of his cigarettes and was chewing the tobacco.