d as they went it seemed that the mist
swallowed them up and a gust of wind caught them away, and the light
also went with them, leaving me alone with the figure who had last
spoken.

Moreover it was just here that a most disquieting thought flashed
through my brain with unreasoning conviction, shaking my personality,
as it were, to the foundations: viz., that I had hitherto been spending
my life in the pursuit of false knowledge, in the mere classifying and
labelling of effects, the analysis of results, scientific so called;
whereas it was the folk-lorist, and such like, who with their dreams
and prayers were all the time on the path of real knowledge, the trail
of causes; that the one was merely adding to the mechanical comfort and
safety of the body, ultimately degrading the highest part of man, and
never advancing the type, while the other--but then I had never yet
believed in a soul--and now was no time to begin, terror or no terror.
Clearly, my thoughts were wandering.

IV

It was at this moment the sound of the purring first reached me--deep,
guttural purring--that made me think at once of some large concealed
animal. It was precisely what I had heard many a time at the Zoological
Gardens, and I had visions of cows chewing the cud, or horses munching
hay in a stall outside the cottage. It was certainly an animal sound,
and one of pleasure and contentment.

Semi-darkness filled the room. Only a very faint moonlight, struggling
through the mist, came through the window, and I moved back
instinctively toward the support of the wall against my back.
Somewhere, through openings, came the sound of the night driving over
the roof, and far above I had visions of those everlasting winds
streaming by with clouds as large as continents on their wings.
Something in me wanted to sing and shout, but something else in me at
the same time was in a very vivid state of unreasoning terror. I felt
immense, yet tiny, confident, yet timid; a part of huge, universal
forces, yet an utterly small, personal, and very limited being.

In the corner of the room on my right stood the woman. Her face was hid
by a mass of tumbling hair, that made me think of living grasses on a
field in June. Thus her head was partially turned from me, and the
moonlight, catching her outline, just revealed it against the wall like
an impressionist picture. Strange hidden memories stirred in the depths
of me, and for a moment I felt that I knew all about