outside.

"Is anyone here?" I asked.

And without waiting for an answer I struck a match. This is what I
saw while it was burning. A man was sitting on the blood-stained
floor at my very feet. If my step had been a longer one I should
have trodden on him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands
pressed on the floor, he was making an effort to raise his handsome
face, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In the
big eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain,
and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face.
That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the hands
he leaned upon, his hard breathing and his clenched teeth, showed
that he was suffering beyond endurance. Near his right hand in a
pool of blood lay a revolver.

"Don't go away," I heard a faint voice when the match had gone out.
"There's a candle on the table."

I lighted the candle and stood still in the middle of the room not
knowing what to do next. I stood and looked at the man on the floor,
and it seemed to me that I had seen him before.

"The pain is insufferable," he whispered, "and I haven't the strength
to shoot myself again. Incomprehensible lack of will."

I flung off my overcoat and attended to the sick man. Lifting him
from the floor like a baby, I laid him on the American-leather
covered sofa and carefully undressed him. He was shivering and cold