WEBVTT

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The next passage is
from the novel Stoner,

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which concerns a man raised on
a farm, who suddenly discovered,

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when he was in college,
a love for literature

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and devoted the rest of
his life to teaching.

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He was a professor.

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In the eyes of the
world, he might have

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been thought to be a failure.

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In the eyes of the
reader of Stoner,

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I hope he is not
thought to be so.

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He had an ordinary life.

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He married, rather badly.

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Had a daughter whom he loved,
and one love affair with a girl

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named Katherine, who
also was a scholar.

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At the age of 65, he
discovers that he is dying.

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He dies during the
year of his retirement.

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As he is dying, he
thinks of his life

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and what it has meant to him.

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He is at his home, and
these are the last moments

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of Stoner's life.

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"The pain came upon
him with a suddenness

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and an urgency that took him
unprepared, so that he almost

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cried out.

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He made his hands loosen
up on the bedclothes

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and willed them to move
steadily to the night table.

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He took several of the pills,
and put them in his mouth,

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and swallowed some water.

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A cold sweat broke
upon his forehead,

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and he lay very still
until the pain lessened.

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He heard the voices again.

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He did not open his eyes.

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Was it Gordon?"

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A friend of his.

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"His hearing seemed to go
outside his body and hover

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like a cloud above him,
transmitting to him

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every delicacy of sound, but
his mind could not exactly

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distinguish the words.

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The voice-- was it Gordon's?

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Was saying something
about his life.

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And though he could
not make out the words,

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could not even be sure that they
were being said, his own mind,

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with the fierceness of a
wounded animal, pounced

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upon that question.

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Mercilessly, he saw his life
as it must appear to another.

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Dispassionately, reasonably,
he contemplated the failure

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that his life must appear to be.

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He had wanted friendship and
the closeness of friendship

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that might hold him in
the race of mankind.

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He had had, in his life,
two friends, one of whom

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had died senselessly before he
was known, the other of whom

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had now withdrawn so
distantly into the ranks

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of the living that--

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he had wanted the singleness
and the still connective passion

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of marriage.

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He had had that too, and he had
not known what to do with it,

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and it had died.

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He had wanted love,
and he had had love,

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and had relinquished
it, had let it go

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into the chaos of potentiality.

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Katherine, he
thought, Katherine.

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And he had wanted to be a
teacher, and he had become one.

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Yet he knew-- he
had always known--

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that for most of his life, he
had been an indifferent one.

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He had dreamed of a kind of
integrity, of a kind of purity

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that was entire.

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He had found compromise in
the assaulting diversion

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of triviality.

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He had conceived wisdom, and
at the end of the long years,

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he had found ignorance.

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And what else?

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He thought.

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What else?

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What did you expect?

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He asked himself.

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He opened his eyes.

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It was dark.

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Then he saw the sky outside,
the deep, blue black of space,

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and the thin glow of
moonlight through a cloud.

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It must be very
late, he thought.

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It seemed only an instant
ago that Gordon and Edith

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had stood beside him in
the bright afternoon.

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Or was it long ago?

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He could not tell.

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He had known that his mind
must weaken as his body wasted,

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but he had been unprepared
for the suddenness.

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The flesh is strong, he thought,
stronger than we imagine.

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It wants always to go on.

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He heard voices and saw lights,
and felt the pain come and go.

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Edith's face hovered above him.

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He felt his face smile.

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Sometimes, he heard
his own voice speak,

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and he thought that
it spoke rationally,

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though he could not be sure.

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He felt Edith's hands on
him, moving him, bathing him.

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She has her child
again, he thought.

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At last, she has her child
that she can care for.

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He wished that he
could speak to her.

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He felt that he had
something to say.

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What did you expect?

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He thought.

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Something heavy was
pressing upon his eyelids.

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He felt them tremble, and then
he managed to get them open.

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It was light that he
felt, the bright sunlight

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of an afternoon.

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He blinked and
considered impassively

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the blue sky and the
brilliant edge of the sun

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that he could see
through his window.

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He decided that they were real.

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He moved a hand, and
with the movement

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he felt a curious strength
flow through him, as if

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from the air.

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He breathed deeply.

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There was no pain.

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With each breath he
took, it seemed to him

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that his strength increased.

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His flesh tangled,
and he could feel

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the delicate weight of light
and shade upon his face.

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He raised himself
up from the bed

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so that he was half sitting,
his back supported by the wall,

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against which the bed rested.

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Now, he could see
the out of doors.

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He felt that he had
awakened from a long sleep

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and was refreshed.

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It was late spring
or early summer.

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More likely early summer
from the look of things.

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There was a richness and a sheen
upon the leaves of the huge elm

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tree in his backyard.

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And the shade it cast
had a deep coolness

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that he had known before.

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A thickness was in the
air, a heaviness that

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crowded the sweet odors of
grass, and leaf, and flower,

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mingling them, and
holding them suspended.

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He breathed again, deeply.

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He heard the rasping
of his breath,

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and felt the sweetness of the
summer gather in his lungs.

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And he felt also, with
that breath he took,

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a shifting somewhere
deep inside him,

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a shifting that stopped
something and fixed his head so

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that it would not move.

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And then it passed,
and he thought,

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so this is what it is like.

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It occurred to him that
he ought to call Edith,

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and then he knew that
he would not call her.

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The dying are
selfish, he thought.

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They want their moments to
themselves, like children.

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He was breathing
again, but there

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was a difference within
him that he could not name.

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He felt that he was waiting for
something, for some knowledge,

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but it seemed to him that he
had all the time in the world.

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He heard the distant
sound of laughter,

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and he turned his head
toward its source.

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A group of students had cut
across the backyard lawn.

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They were hurrying somewhere.

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He saw them distinctly.

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There were three couples.

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The girls were long-limbed and
graceful in their light summer

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dresses, and the boys
were looking at them

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with a joyous and
bemused wonder.

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They walked lightly
upon the grass,

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hardly touching it, leaving no
trace of where they had been.

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He watched them as they
went out of his sight,

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where he could not see.

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And for a long time
after they had vanished,

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the sound of their laughter
came to him far and unknowing

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in the quiet of the
summer afternoon.

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What did you expect?

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He thought again.

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A kind of joy came upon him, as
if borne in on a summer breeze.

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He dimly recalled that he had
been thinking of failure as

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if it mattered.

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It seemed to him now that such
thoughts were mean, unworthy

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of what his life had been.

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Dim presences gathered at the
edge of his consciousness.

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He could not see them, but
he knew that they were there,

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gathering their forces
toward a kind of palpability

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he could not see or hear.

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He was approaching
them, he knew,

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but there was no need to hurry.

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He could ignore
them if he wished.

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He had all the time there was.

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There was a softness
around him, and the languor

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crept upon his limbs.

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A sense of his own identity came
upon him with a sudden force,

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and he felt the power of it.

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He was himself, and he
knew what he had been.

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His head turned.

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His bedside table
was piled with books

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that he had not touched
for a long time.

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He let his hand play
over them for a moment.

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He marveled at the
thinness of the fingers,

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at the intricate articulation
of the joints as he flexed them.

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He felt the strength
within them and let

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them pull a book from the
jumble on the tabletop.

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It was his own book
that he sought,

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and when the hand
held it, he smiled

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at the familiar red cover
that had for a long time

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been faded and scuffed.

00:10:06.185 --> 00:10:09.800 align:middle line:90%


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It hardly mattered to him
that the book was forgotten

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and that it served no use.

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And the question of its worth at
any time seemed almost trivial.

00:10:19.790 --> 00:10:22.790 align:middle line:84%
He did not have the illusion
that he would find himself

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there in that fading
print, and yet he

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knew a small part of him
that he could not deny

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was there and would be there.

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He opened the book, and as he
did so, it became not his own.

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He let his fingers
riffle through the pages,

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and felt a tingling as if
those pages were alive.

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The tingling came
through his fingers

00:10:49.310 --> 00:10:51.740 align:middle line:84%
and coursed through
his flesh and bone.

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He was minutely
aware of it, and he

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waited until it contained him,
until the old excitement that

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was like terror fixed
him where he lay.

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The sunlight, passing his
window, shone upon the page,

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and he could not see
what was written there.

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The fingers loosened, and
the book they had held

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moved slowly, and then
swiftly, across the still body,

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and fell into the
silence of the room."

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