Very quickly it would come to seem to Lionel Hoffmann that the remainder of his life, all that was not Siri, was of little more substance than those hypnagogic images that flash against our eyelids when, in a state of exhaustion, we begin to sink into sleep.

Smith, alias Simpson.

My life I never held but as a pawn / To wage against thy enemies.

The vital fluid is soon separated into its constituent elements, and the serous, saline, and albuminous portions of it are profusely poured from the system, through the toneless myriads of the patulous extreme vessels of the alimonious region; […]