opening and shutting, but so far away and faint that if real at all it
must have been in a far corner of the house. I did not move except to
lift my eyes from the book as one does instinctively the better to
listen; when--But I cannot tell, nor have I ever been able to describe
exactly what it was. My heart made all at once a sudden leap in my
breast. I am aware that this language is figurative, and that the heart
cannot leap; but it is a figure so entirely justified by sensation, that
no one will have any difficulty in understanding what I mean. My heart
leaped up and began beating wildly in my throat, in my ears, as if my
whole being had received a sudden and intolerable shock. The sound went
through my head like the dizzy sound of some strange mechanism, a
thousand wheels and springs circling, echoing, working in my brain. I
felt the blood bound in my veins, my mouth became dry, my eyes hot; a
sense of something insupportable took possession of me. I sprang to my
feet, and then I sat down again. I cast a quick glance round me beyond
the brief circle of the lamplight, but there was nothing there to
account in any way for this sudden extraordinary rush of sensation, nor
could I feel any meaning in it, any suggestion, any moral impression. I
thought I must be going to be ill, and got out my watch and felt my
pulse: it was beating furiously, about one hundred and twenty-five throbs
in a minute. I knew of no illness that could come on like this without
warning, in a moment, and I tried to subdue myself, to say to myself that
it was nothing, some flutter of the nerves, some physical disturbance. I
laid myself down upon my sofa to try if rest would help me, and kept
still, as long as the thumping and throbbing of this wild, excited
mechanism within, like a wild beast plunging and struggling, would let
me. I am quite aware of the confusion of the metaphor; the reality was
just so. It was like a mechanism deranged, going wildly with
ever-increasing precipitation, like those horrible wheels that from time
to time catch a helpless human being in them and tear him to pieces; but