How thick the fog was outside--thick enough for a man to lose himself
in it. The yellow mist which had crept in under the doors and through
the crevices of the window-sashes gave a ghostly look to the room--a
ghastly, abnormal look, he said to himself. The fire was smouldering
instead of blazing. But what did it matter? He was going out. He had
not bought the pistol last night--like a fool. Somehow his brain had
been so tired and crowded that he had forgotten.

"Forgotten." He mentally repeated the word as he got out of bed. By
this time to-morrow he should have forgotten everything. THIS TIME
TO-MORROW. His mind repeated that also, as he began to dress himself.
Where should he be? Should he be anywhere? Suppose he awakened again--
to something as bad as this? How did a man get out of his body? After
the crash and shock what happened? Did one find oneself standing beside
the Thing and looking down at it? It would not be a good thing to stand
and look down on--even for that which had deserted it. But having torn
oneself loose from it and its devilish aches and pains, one would not
care--one would see how little it all mattered. Anything else must be
better than this--the thing for which there was a scientific name but no
healing. He had taken all the drugs, he had obeyed all the medical
orders, and here he was after that last hell of a night--dressing
himself in a back bedroom of a cheap lodging-house to go out and buy a
pistol in this damned fog.

He laughed at the last phrase of his thought, the laugh which was a
mirthless grin.

"I am thinking of it as if I was afraid of taking cold," he said. "And
to-morrow--!"