weep. It suits me to hold him up, and a kicking might restore his
equilibrium. I'm sick of him--I've told him so. I knew there _was_ a
woman. But don't you worry; _I'm_ the man here."

"If that's the case ..." I said.

"Oh, that's it," he answered.

I helped him to put the paper to bed; took some of the work off his
hands. It was all part of the getting back to life; of the resuming of
rusty armour; and I wanted to pass the night. I was not unused to it,
as it happened. Fox had had several of these fits during my year, and
during most of them I had helped him through the night; once or twice
for three on end. Once I had had entire control for a matter of five
nights. But they gave me a new idea of Fox, those two or three weird
hours that night. It was as if I had never seen him before. The attacks
grew more virulent as the night advanced. He groaned and raved, and said
things--oh, the most astounding things in gibberish that upset one's
nerves and everything else. At the height he sang hymns, and then, as
the fits passed, relapsed into incredible clear-headedness. It gave me,
I say, a new idea of Fox. It was as if, for all the time I had known
him, he had been playing a part, and that only now, in the delirium of
his pain, in the madness into which he drank himself, were fragments of
the real man thrown to the surface. I grew, at last, almost afraid to be
alone with him in the dead small hours of the morning, and longed for
the time when I could go to bed among the uninspiring, marble-topped
furniture of my club.