art any more.

I think one would die soon and easily underground, as creatures in a
vacuum, for the will to live has so little to nourish itself on. One's
whole nature falls into a catalepsy; all one's faculties seem asleep,
save the animal impulse to escape--an impulse that would soon grow weary
too. So, it seemed to me, as I saw a little light and drew the breath of
the living world once more, that even my love for Calypso had, so to
say, been in a state of suspended animation during an entombment which
was heavy with the poppy of the grave, and made me understand why the
dead forget us so soon.

But now, as I stood on the little rocky platform outside the door
through which I had burned my way, and looked down into the glimmering
chasm beneath, and heard the fresh voice of the sea huskily rumbling and
reverberating about hidden grottoes and channels, all that Calypso was
to me came back with the keenness of a sword through my heart. Ah! there
was my treasure--as I had known when my eyes first beheld her--compared
with which that gold and silver in there, whose gleam had made me
momentarily distraught, was but so much dust and ashes. Ardently as I
had sought it, what was it compared to one glance of her eyes? What if,
in the same hour, I had lost my true treasure, and found the false? At
the thought, that glittering heap became abhorrent to me, and, without
looking back, I sought for some way by which I could descend.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, I saw that there were some
shallow steps cut diagonally in the rock, and down these I had soon made
my way, to find myself in a roomy corridor, so much like that in which I
had seen Calypso standing in the moonlight, that, for a moment, I
dreamed it was the same, and started to run down it, thinking, indeed,
that my troubles were over--that in another moment I would emerge
through that enchanted door and face the sea. The more so, as the sand
was wet under my feet, showing that the tide had but recently left it.

But alas! instead of a broad shining doorway, and open arms of freedom
widespread for me to leap into, I came at last to a mere long narrow
slit--through which I could gaze as a man gazes through a prison window
at the sky.

The entrance had once been wide and free, but a mass of rock had fallen
from above and blocked it up, leaving only a long crack through which
the tides passed to and fro.

I was still in my trap; it seemed more terrible tha