and woke, I thought
all was over: the end come and past by. Trembling fearfully--as
consciousness returned--ready to cry out on some fellow-creature to
help me, only that I knew no fellow-creature was near enough to catch
the wild summons--Goton in her far distant attic could not hear--I rose
on my knees in bed. Some fearful hours went over me: indescribably was
I torn, racked and oppressed in mind. Amidst the horrors of that dream
I think the worst lay here. Methought the well-loved dead, who had
loved _me_ well in life, met me elsewhere, alienated: galled was my
inmost spirit with an unutterable sense of despair about the future.
Motive there was none why I should try to recover or wish to live; and
yet quite unendurable was the pitiless and haughty voice in which Death
challenged me to engage his unknown terrors. When I tried to pray I
could only utter these words: "From my youth up Thy terrors have I
suffered with a troubled mind."

Most true was it.

On bringing me my tea next morning Goton urged me to call in a doctor.
I would not: I thought no doctor could cure me.

One evening--and I was not delirious: I was in my sane mind, I got
up--I dressed myself, weak and shaking. The solitude and the stillness
of the long dormitory could not be borne any longer; the ghastly white
beds were turning into spectres--the coronal of each became a
death's-head, huge and sun-bleached--dead dreams of an elder world and
mightier race lay frozen in their wide gaping eyeholes. That evening
more firmly than ever fastened into my soul the conviction that Fate
was of stone, and Hope a false idol--blind, bloodless, and of granite
core. I felt, too, that the trial God had appointed me was gaining its
climax, and must now be turned by my own hands, hot, feeble, trembling
as they were. It rained still, and blew; but with more clemency, I
thought, than it had poured and raged all day. Twilight was falling,
and I deemed its influence pitiful; from the lattice I saw coming
night-clouds trailing low like banners drooping. It seemed to me that
at this hour there was affection and sorrow in Heaven above for all
pain suffered on earth beneath; the weight of my dreadful dream became
alleviated--that insufferable thought of being no more loved--no more
owned, half-yielded to hope of the contrary--I was sure this hope would
shine clearer if I got out from under this house-roof, which was
crushing as the slab of a tomb, and went outside the city t