ment, as to the length of time that had passed, that I was
bewildered, and gave up all attempts to arrive at any conclusion on the
point.

A gray mist continually gathered behind me. When I looked back towards
the past, this mist was the medium through which my eyes had to strain
for a vision of what had gone by; and the form of the white lady had
receded into an unknown region. At length the country of rock began
to close again around me, gradually and slowly narrowing, till I found
myself walking in a gallery of rock once more, both sides of which I
could touch with my outstretched hands. It narrowed yet, until I
was forced to move carefully, in order to avoid striking against the
projecting pieces of rock. The roof sank lower and lower, until I was
compelled, first to stoop, and then to creep on my hands and knees.
It recalled terrible dreams of childhood; but I was not much afraid,
because I felt sure that this was my path, and my only hope of leaving
Fairy Land, of which I was now almost weary.

At length, on getting past an abrupt turn in the passage, through
which I had to force myself, I saw, a few yards ahead of me, the
long-forgotten daylight shining through a small opening, to which the
path, if path it could now be called, led me. With great difficulty I
accomplished these last few yards, and came forth to the day. I stood on
the shore of a wintry sea, with a wintry sun just a few feet above its
horizon-edge. It was bare, and waste, and gray. Hundreds of hopeless
waves rushed constantly shorewards, falling exhausted upon a beach
of great loose stones, that seemed to stretch miles and miles in both
directions. There was nothing for the eye but mingling shades of
gray; nothing for the ear but the rush of the coming, the roar of the
breaking, and the moan of the retreating wave. No rock lifted up a
sheltering severity above the dreariness around; even that from which I
had myself emerged rose scarcely a foot above the opening by which I
had reached the dismal day, more dismal even than the tomb I had left.
A cold, death-like wind swept across the shore, seeming to issue from a
pale mouth of cloud upon the horizon. Sign of life was nowhere visible.
I wandered over the stones, up and down the beach, a human imbodiment of
the nature around me. The wind increased; its keen waves flowed through
my soul; the foam rushed higher up the stones; a few dead stars began
to gleam in the east; the sound of the waves grew lo