He felt very hot between the sheets and simply could not drop off. He tossed and turned, five minutes on his back, five more on his left side, then his right, and so on.

He felt thirsty again and got up for a drink. A sudden thought set him worrying: ‘Could it be that I’m frightened?’

Why did his heart start to beat wildly every time he heard the most ordinary noises in the room? When the clock was about to strike, the sound of the spring just beforehand made him jump. He had to breathe through his mouth for a few seconds to recover. He began to weigh the possibilities: ‘Could I be scared?’

Of course not! He couldn’t be scared if he was so determined to see it through! He couldn’t be frightened if he had willed himself to fight and not to waver. But he was so worried that he now began to entertain a further possibility: ‘Could a man be frightened in spite of himself?’

He was overwhelmed now, first by doubt, then anxiety and finally terror. What if a force stronger than his own will-power overcame him? What would happen then? No doubt he would make it to the appointed spot because he wanted to. But what if he was shaking? What if he passed out? He thought of his position in society, his reputation, and his good name.

A sudden, bizarre impulse made him get up again to go and look at himself in the mirror. He relit his candle. When he saw his face in the polished glass he hardly recognized himself. It was as if he had never seen himself before. His eyes were enormous and he was as pale as a ghost.

He remained standing in front of the mirror and was about to stick out his tongue to check his state of health, when suddenly a thought struck him like a bullet:

‘This time the day after tomorrow I could be dead.’

His heart began to pound furiously again.

‘This time the day after tomorrow, this person in front of me, this me I see in the mirror will be no more. What? Here I am looking at myself, feeling myself living, and in twenty-four hours I could be lying over there in that bed, dead, with my eyes closed – cold, lifeless, gone!’

He turned towards the bed, and could distinctly visualize himself lying there on his back under the same sheets as a moment ago. He had the hollow-faced look of the dead and his hands the lifelessness of those which will never move again. He became frightened of his bed, and to avoid looking at it he went through into his smoking room. Mechanically he picked up a cigar, lit it and started pacing up and down again. He felt cold and was just about to ring for his manservant when he stopped, his hand on the bell-pull. ‘The man will see I’m frightened.’