" I had grown nervous and irritable. A few times I had kept my bed
for the day with vertigo. Now and then, when luck had favoured me, I had
managed to get five shillings for a feuilleton from some newspaper or
other.
It grew lighter and lighter, and I took to reading the advertisements near
the door. I could even make out the grinning lean letters of "winding-
sheets to be had at Miss Andersen's" on the right of it. That occupied me
for a long while. I heard the clock below strike eight as I got up and put
on my clothes.
I opened the window and looked out. From where I was standing I had a view
of a clothes, line and an open field. Farther away lay the ruins of a
burnt-out smithy, which some labourers were busy clearing away. I leant
with my elbows resting on the window-frame and gazed into open space. It
promised to be a clear day--autumn, that tender, cool time of the year,
when all things change their colour, and die, had come to us. The
ever-increasing noise in the streets lured me out. The bare room, the
floor of which rocked up and down with every step I took across it, seemed
like a gasping, sinister coffin. There was no proper fastening to the
door, either, and no stove. I used to lie on my socks at night to dry them
a little by the morning. The only thing I had to divert myself with was a
little red rocking-chair, in which I used to sit in the evenings and doze
and muse on all manner of things.
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