"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer.
But I know I am drawing towards the vortex.
Presently --"

"Yes?"

"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of
the light of the day, out of this sweet world of sanity --
down --"

"But," expostulated Isbister.

The man threw out a hand towards him, and his
eyes were wild, and his voice suddenly high. "I shall
kill myself. If in no other way -- at the foot of yonder
dark precipice there, where the waves are green,
and the white surge lifts and falls, and that little
thread of water trembles down. There at any rate is
. . . sleep."

"That's unreasonable," said Isbister, startled at the
man's hysterical gust of emotion. "Drugs are better
than that."

"There at any rate is sleep," repeated the stranger,
not heeding him.

Isbister looked at him and wondered transitorily if
some complex Providence had indeed brought them