altogether
familiar, and the voices of men and women sounded with strange notes,
with the echo, rather, of a music that came over unknown hills. And day
by day as she went about her household work, passing from shop to shop
in those dull streets that were a network, a fatal labyrinth of grey
desolation on every side, there came to her sense half-seen images of
some other world, as if she walked in a dream, and every moment must
bring her to light and to awakening, when the grey should fade, and
regions long desired should appear in glory. Again and again it seemed
as if that which was hidden would be shown even to the sluggish
testimony of sense; and as she went to and fro from street to street of
that dim and weary suburb, and looked on those grey material walls, they
seemed as if a light glowed behind them, and again and again the mystic
fragrance of incense was blown to her nostrils from across the verge of
that world which is not so much impenetrable as ineffable, and to her
ears came the dream of a chant that spoke of hidden choirs about all her
ways. She struggled against these impressions, refusing her assent to
the testimony of them, since all the pressure of credited opinion for
three hundred years has been directed towards stamping out real
knowledge, and so effectually has this been accomplished that we can
only recover the truth through much anguish. And so Mary passed the days
in a strange perturbation, clinging to common things and common
thoughts, as if she feared that one morning she would wake up in an
unknown world to a changed life. And Edward Darnell went day by day to
his labour and returned in the evening, always with that shining of
light within his eyes and upon his face, with the gaze of wonder that
was greater day by day, as if for him the veil grew thin and soon would
disappear.

From these great matters both in herself and in her husband Mary shrank
back, afraid, perhaps, that if she began the question the answer might
be too wonderful. She rather taught herself to be troubled over little
things; she asked herself what attraction there could be in the old
records over which she supposed Edward to be poring night after night in
the cold room upstairs. She had glanced over the papers at Darnell's
invitation, and could see but little interest in them; there were one or
two sketches, roughly done in pen and ink, of the old house in the west:
it looked a shapeless and fantastic place, furnished w