"Herbert George Wells. When the Sleeper Wakes" - читать интересную книгу автора

were silent.

"Exercise?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.

"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
day after day-from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork- trouble. There was
something-"

He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.

"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
have no part. I am wifelesschildless-who is it speaks of the childless as
the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, I childless-I could find
no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set myself
to do.

"I said, I will do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this dull
body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I don't
know if __you__ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its exasperating
demand of time from the mind-timelife! Live! We only live in patches. We
have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive complacenciesor irritations.
We have to take the air or else our thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run
into gulfs and blind alleys. A thousand distractions arise from within and
without, and then comes drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep.
How little of a man's day is his own-even at the best! And then come those
false friends, those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural
fatigue and kill restblack coffee, cocaine-"

"I see," said Isbister.

"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.

"And this is the price? "

"Yes." For a little while the two remained without speaking.

"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel-a hunger and thirst.
For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a whirlpool,
swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts leading nowhere,
spinning round swift and steady-"

He paused. "Towards the gulf."

"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."

"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am drawing