dusk, without
individuality; things that moved below me in a valley from which I had
emerged. I must have been dreaming of them.

I know I dreamed of her. She alone was distinct among these shapes. She
appeared dazzling; resplendent with a splendid calmness, and I braced
myself to the shock of love, the love I had known, that all men had
known; but greater, transcendental, almost terrible, a fit reward for
the sacrifice of a whole past. Suddenly she spoke. I heard a sound like
the rustling of a wind through trees, and I felt the shock of an unknown
emotion made up of fear and of enthusiasm, as though she had been not a
woman but only a voice crying strange, unknown words in inspiring tones,
promising and cruel, without any passion of love or hate. I listened. It
was like the wind in the trees of a little wood. No hate ... no love. No
love. There was a crash as of a falling temple. I was borne to the
earth, overwhelmed, crushed by an immensity of ruin and of sorrow. I
opened my eyes and saw the sun shining through the window-blinds.

I seem to remember I was surprised at it. I don't know why. Perhaps the
lingering effect of the ruin in the dream, which had involved sunshine
itself. I liked it though, and lay for a time enjoying the--what shall I
say?--usualness of it. The sunshine of yesterday--of to-morrow. It
occurred to me that the morning must be far advanced, and I got up
briskly, as a man rises to his work. But as soon as I got on my legs I
felt as if I had already over-worked myself. In reality there was
nothing to do. All my muscles twitched with fatigue. I had experienced
the same sensations once after an hour's desperate swimming to save
myself from being carried out to sea by the tide.

No. There was nothing to do. I descended the staircase, and an utter
sense of aimlessness drove me out through the big doors, which swung
behind me without noise. I turned toward the river, and on the broad
embankment the sunshine enveloped me, friendly, familiar, and warm like
the care of an old friend. A black dumb barge drifted, clumsy and empty,
and the solitary man in it wrestled with the heavy sweep, straining his
arms, throwing his face up to the sky at every effort. He knew what he
was doing, though it was the river that did his work for him.

His exertions impressed me with the idea that I too had something to
do. Certainly I had. One always has. Somehow I could not remember. It
was intolerable, and even alarming, t