And then, for the first time, I think, in my life, panic gripped
me, the sheer, blind fear which destroys the reason. It swept over
me in a wave, that numbing terror which comes to one in dreams.
Indeed, the thing had become dream-like. I seemed to be standing
outside myself, looking on at myself, watching myself heave and
strain with bruised fingers at a window that would not open.


III

The arm-chair critic, reviewing a situation calmly and at his
ease, is apt to make too small allowances for the effect of hurry
and excitement on the human mind. He is cool and detached. He sees
exactly what ought to have been done, and by what simple means
catastrophe might have been averted.

He would have made short work of my present difficulty, I feel
certain. It was ridiculously simple. But I had lost my head, and
had ceased for the moment to be a reasoning creature. In the end,
indeed, it was no presence of mind but pure good luck which saved
me. Just as the door, which had held out gallantly, gave way
beneath the attack from outside, my fingers, slipping, struck
against the catch of the window, and I understood why I had failed
to raise it.

I snapped the catch back, and flung up the sash. An icy wind swept
into the room, bearing particles of snow. I scrambled on to the
window-sill, and a crash from behind me told of the falling of the
door.