I threw up
the window at once, but it opened so close to the floor and
worked so clumsily that I came within an ace of pitching out,
where I should certainly have ruined a rather lop-sided laburnum
below. As I set about washing off the journey's dust, I began to
feel a little tired. But, I reflected, I had not come down here
in this weather and among these new surroundings to be depressed;
so I began to whistle.
And it was just then that I was aware of a little grey shadow, as
it might have been a snowflake seen against the light, floating
at an immense distance in the background of my brain. It annoyed
me, and I shook my head to get rid of it. Then my brain
telegraphed that it was the forerunner of a swift-striding gloom
which there was yet time to escape if I would force my thoughts
away from it, as a man leaping for life forces his body forward
and away from the fall of a wall. But the gloom overtook me
before I could take in the meaning of the message. I moved toward
the bed, every nerve already aching with the foreknowledge of the
pain that was to be dealt it, and sat down, while my amazed and
angry soul dropped, gulf by gulf, into that horror of great
darkness which is spoken of in the Bible, and which, as
auctioneers say, must be experienced to be appreciated.
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