eyes, starting,
horror-driven from their orbits, staring blank and wide and hideous at
the overwhelming hell that would be falling down from heaven upon the
devoted earth. He saw her fresh young face withered and horror-lined and
old, and the bright-brown hair grown grey with the years that would pass
in those few final moments. He saw the sweet red lips which had tempted
him so often to wild thoughts parched and black, wide open and gasping
vainly for the breath of life in a hot, burnt-out atmosphere.

Then he saw--no, it was only a glimpse; and with that the strange
trance-vision ended. What must have come after that would in all
certainty have driven him mad there and then, before his work had even
begun; but at that moment, swiftly severing the darkness that was
falling over his soul, there came to him an idea, bright, luminous, and
lovely as an inspiration from Heaven itself, and with it came back the
calm sanity of the sternly-disciplined intellect, prepared to
contemplate, not only the destruction of the world he lived in, but even
the loss of the woman he loved--the only human being who could make the
world beautiful or even tolerable for him.

The vision was blotted out from the sight of his soul; the darkness
cleared away from his eyes, and he saw her again as she still was. It
had all passed in a few moments and yet in them he had been down into
hell--and he had come back to earth, and into her presence.

Almost by the time she had uttered her last word, he had regained
command of his voice, and he began clearly and quietly to answer the
question which was still echoing through the chambers of his brain.

"It was only a little passing faintness, thank you; and something else
which you will understand when I have done, if you have patience to hear
me to the end," he said, looking straight at her for a moment, and then
beginning to walk slowly up and down the room past her chair.

"I am going to surprise you, perhaps to frighten you, and very probably
to offend you deeply," he began again in a quiet, dry sort of tone,
which somehow impressed her against all her convictions that he didn't
much care whether or not he did any or all of these things: but there
was something else in his tone and manner which held her to her seat,
silent and attentive, although she was conscious of a distinct desire to
get up and run away.

"Your guess about the comet, or whatever it may prove to be, is quite
correct. I don't