Each day, the night falls a little more for me. I am at the dusk of my passionate life, and it’s the normal process of things.

my dark day further darkened.

And that day the cultural god of science had shone a bit less brightly, had died a little in the people's minds.

What moment in that gradual decay

Time has a way of blunting the sharpest edge of determination.

It was not really alarming at first, since the change was subtle, but I did notice that my surroundings took on a different tone at certain times: the shadows of nightfall seemed more somber, my mornings were less buoyant, walks in the woods became less zestful, and there was a moment during my working hours in the late afternoon when a kind of panic and anxiety overtook me, just for a few minutes, accompanied by a visceral queasiness.

This abattement and degradation did not take place all at once; it was brought about by degrees

Routine wears down vigilance.

And oh! I shall find how, day by day,
All thoughts and things look older;
How the laugh of pleasure grows less gay,
And the heart of friendship colder.

The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.

What at night had been perfect and ideal was by day the more or less defective real.

Whatever resolve and certainty he had felt in the past few weeks had melted away. Strangely, there was some lightness in the unknowing, like a clenched fist had been unfurled. (chapter 34)

One lucent corner windowing hidden things Forced the world's blind immensity to sight. The darkness failed and slipped like a falling cloak From the reclining body of a god.

Just a sort of unexplained sadness that comes each afternoon when the new day is gone forever and there’s nothing ahead but increasing darkness.