ven above, can understand what he did by night? But those
who have stood even on its lowest rung will guess, and--for the rest it
does not matter.

He advanced; he knew that he advanced, that the gross wall of sense was
wearing thin beneath the attacks of his out-thrown soul; that even if
they were not drawn, from time to time the black curtains swung aside in
the swift, pure breath of his continual prayers. Moreover, the dead drew
near to him at moments, or he drew near the dead. Even in his earthly
brain he could feel their awful presence as wave by wave soft, sweet
pulses of impression beat upon him and passed through him. Through and
through him they passed till his brow ached, and every nerve of his body
tingled, as though it had become the receiver of some mysterious current
that stirred his blood with what was not akin to it, and summoned to his
mind strange memories and foresights. Visions came also that he could
not define, to slip from his frantic grasp like wet sand through the
fingers of a drowning man. More and more frequently, and with an ever
increasing completeness, did this unearthly air, blowing from a shore no
human foot has trod, breathe through his being and possess him, much
as some faint wind which we cannot feel may be seen to possess an aspen
tree so that it turns white and shivers when every other natural thing
is still. And as that aspen turns white and shivers in this thin,
impalpable air, so did his spirit blanch and quiver with joy and dread
mingled mysteriously in the cup of his expectant soul.

Again and again those sweet, yet sickening waves flowed over him, to
leave him shaken and unnerved. At first they were rare visitors, single
clouds floating across his calm, coming he knew not whence and vanishing
he knew not whither. Now they drove in upon him like some scud, ample
yet broken, before the wind, till at whiles, as it were, he could not
see the face of the friendly, human sun. Then he was like a traveller
lost in the mist upon a mountain top, sure of nothing, feeling
precipices about him, hearing voices calling him, seeing white arms
stretched out to lead him, yet running forward gladly because amid so
many perils a fate was in his feet.

Now, too, they came with an actual sense of wind. He would wake up
at night even by his wife's side and feel this unholy breath blowing
ice-cold on his brow and upon the backs of his outstretched hands. Yet
if he lit a candle it had no power to st