Paul was awakened next morning by a painful throbbing in his
head and feet. He had thrown himself across the bed without
undressing, and had slept with his shoes on. His limbs and hands
were lead heavy, and his tongue and throat were parched and
burnt. There came upon him one of those fateful attacks of
clearheadedness that never occurred except when he was physically
exhausted and his nerves hung loose. He lay still, closed his
eyes, and let the tide of things wash over him.

His father was in New York; "stopping at some joint or
other," he told himself. The memory of successive summers on the
front stoop fell upon him like a weight of black water. He had
not a hundred dollars left; and he knew now, more than ever, that
money was everything, the wall that stood between all he loathed
and all he wanted. The thing was winding itself up; he
had thought of that on his first glorious day in New York, and
had even provided a way to snap the thread. It lay on his
dressing table now; he had got it out last night when he came
blindly up from dinner, but the shiny metal hurt his eyes, and he
disliked the looks of it.

He rose and moved about with a painful effort, succumbing now and
again to attacks of nausea. It was the old depression exaggerated;
all the world had become Cordelia Street. Yet somehow he was not
afraid of anything, was absolutely calm; perhaps because he had
looked into the dark corner at last and knew. It was bad enough,
what he saw there, but somehow not so bad as his long fear of it
had been. He saw everything clearly now. He had a feeling that he
had made the best of it, that he had lived the sort of life he was
meant to live, and for half an hour he sat staring at the revolver.