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itching became so unbearable that I
had
to interrupt. At first, my remarks bore a deceptive pertinence to the topics under discussion, and I flatter myself that in those early months no one but my wife, whose canny blue eyes developed a defensive narrowing tic, noticed anything amiss.
    My first total blackout occurred toward the end of August. It had been a very warm August, but that evening a little breeze sprang up off the bay, and my wife and I attended a dinner party with a few of our dearest friends. Never, I thought, had the food been so delicious, the wine so subtle, the ladies so lovely, and the gentlemen so sturdy, acute, and wry. Our conversation on the veranda seemed a veritable dance of ideas, counterthrusts, and graceful laughter. I was dazzled to think that here, in this specific house on the North American continent, Mankind’s tortuous climb toward civilization had at last borne fruit. Imagine, then, my amazement when, in the private closeness of our car, as I hummed a popular air in celebration of a perfect night, my wife turned to me and snapped, “Why did you talk so much? You bored everybody silly.”
    “I?” I protested. “I said little, but that little, well.”
    “Stuff!” she snapped. “Your tongue didn’t stop for four hours. You drove poor Maggie Wentworth absolutely to sleep. And as for Horace, you brought on a bilious attack that had him hiccuping like a cricket.” [
Several pages of such dialogue are here expunged
. —ED. ] Even now, I find it difficult to believe that her impression of the evening is the correct one.One piece of evidence, however—admittedly circumstantial—emerged to support her case. The Wentworths never had us back, though
they
owe
us
.
    After this seizure I was more watchful of myself. I deliberately curtailed my conversational offerings, even in relation to subjects upon which I was plainly the best informed and possessed the most lively and intricate opinions. I made myself, as it were, a mere supplier of footnotes, and artificially withheld from my fellow-humans the riches of information and nuance I knew to be within me. I was on the verge of shucking this (as I thought) foolish and inhibiting cocoon when late one night, as I was briefly qualifying something someone else had said—scarcely, indeed, qualifying; merely restating his gist in more lucid and understandable terms—I noticed, to my horror, that a delicate but distinct glaze had overspread the faces of my auditors. It is impossible to convey the macabre effect. It was not so much that their eyes had gone out of focus (for some eyes were staring fixedly at me) or that their mouths had sagged open (for some mouths were rigidly clamped shut): It was the curious uniformity of complexion, as if with one swipe their faces had been painted with the same lacquer, an impalpable coating whose emotional color, translated into visual terms, was the yellow of distant wheat fields seen through a grimy train window. And, though I paused, gagging on my terror at this disgusting omen,
I went right on talking
. It was then that I realized that I was a hopelessly ill man.
    My subsequent decay was not without its pretty phosphorescences. One of the most vivid, and in a way mystical, sensations is that of
repetition
. As words issue from one’s mouth, one is conscious of having said them before, but with no idea of whether it was an hour ago, a week ago, or in another world altogether. The feeling is not unlike the universally experienced intuition of having been in a strange place at a previous time, which offers to some a comforting proof of the doctrine of reincarnation. The bore’s repetition wears a kindred nimbus of romantic reassurance; though I know I have pronounced these words before, perhaps to this identical company, yet I have no inclination to stop. Indeed, the words seem enhanced by repetition, as in some aesthetic credos furniture and utensils are improved in beauty by the marks of wear left upon them