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Updated: June 13, 2025
Sarakoff's significant whistle that morning came to my mind, and I saw that I had been guilty of singular denseness in not understanding its meaning. And now old Annot would live on and on, year after year. Was I glad? It is impossible to say. It was that expression in the old man's face that dominated me. I tried to think it out.
He forgot his turquoise finger nails, and stared, open-mouthed. "Ain't going to die?" he said. "What do yer mean?" "Simply that you aren't going to die," was Sarakoff's soft answer. "Yer mean, not die of the Blue Disease?" "Not die at all." "Garn! Not die at all." He looked at me. "What's he mean, Mister?" He looked almost surprised with himself at catching the drift of Sarakoff's sentence.
"We had thought of forming isolation camps." He stared at us thoughtfully. There was a slightly puzzled look in his face. It was the first time I had noticed it. It must have been due to Sarakoff's profound calm. "How did you gentlemen find the germ?" he asked suddenly. Sarakoff reflected. "It would take perhaps a week to explain." Sir Robert smiled slightly.
I signalled to a waiter and together we managed to get Sarakoff into a taxi-cab. As we drove home, all that lay behind Sarakoff's broken confused words revealed itself with increasing distinctness to me. Sarakoff spoke again. "Harden," he muttered thickly, "there was a flaw in the dream " "Yes," I said. "I was sure there would be a flaw. I hadn't noticed it before " "We're cut off," he whispered.
"Don't stare at me like that. You'll have it yourself to-morrow," I shouted. "The whole of the blessed city will have it." A loud rap at the door interrupted me. I jumped up, darted across the room and threw myself under the bed. "Don't let anyone in," I whispered. The rap was repeated. Sarakoff's voice sounded without. "Let me in. It's all right. He's gone. The front door is bolted."
Simply to mitigate suffering; and that is another way of saying that it was to increase physical well-being. Why, then, did Sarakoff's views appear extreme to me? What was there in my composition that whispered a doubt when I had the doctrine of maximum pleasure painted with glowing enthusiasm by the Russian in the train that afternoon? I moved into Oxford Street deeply pondering.
A kind of dull depression came over me, and for some reason the picture of Sarakoff's butterflies appeared in my mind. I saw them with great distinctness, crawling aimlessly on the floor of their cage. "Why should I work?" I repeated. Sarakoff merely shrugged his shoulders and turned away. Questions of that kind did not seem to bother him.
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