ue? What if the
finished landscape that lay beyond the doom-door was but developed from
the faint sketch traced by the strivings of our spirit--to each man
his own picture, but filled in, perfected, vivified a thousandfold, for
terror or for joy perfect and inconceivable?

The thought was fascinating, but not without its fears. It was
strange that a man who had abandoned hopes should still be haunted by
fears--like everything else in the world, this is unjust. For a little
while, five or ten minutes, not more than ten, I would let my mind dwell
on that thought, trying to dig down to its roots which doubtless drew
their strength from the foetid slime of human superstition, trying to
behold its topmost branches where they waved in sparkling light. No,
that was not the theory; I must imagine those invisible branches as
grim skeletons of whitened wood, standing stirless in that atmosphere of
overwhelming night.

So I sat myself in a chair, placing the medicine glass with the draught
of bane upon the table before me, and, to make sure that I did not
exceed the ten minutes, near to it my travelling clock. As I sat thus
I fell into a dream or vision. I seemed to see myself standing upon the
world, surrounded by familiar sights and sounds. There in the west the
sun sank in splendour, and the sails of a windmill that turned slowly
between its orb and me were now bright as gold, and now by contrast
black as they dipped into the shadow. Near the windmill was a cornfield,
and beyond the cornfield stood a cottage whence came the sound of lowing
cattle and the voices of children. Down a path that ran through the
ripening corn walked a young man and a maid, their arms twined about
each other, while above their heads a lark poured out its song.

But at my very feet this kindly earth and all that has life upon it
vanished quite away, and there in its place, seen through a giant
portal, was the realm of darkness that I had pictured--darkness so
terrible, so overpowering, and so icy that my living blood froze at
the sight of it. Presently something stirred in the darkness, for it
trembled like shaken water. A shape came forward to the edge of the
gateway so that the light of the setting sun fell upon it, making it
visible. I looked and knew that it was the phantom of my lost wife
wrapped in her last garments. There she stood, sad and eager-faced, with
quick-moving lips, from which no echo reached my ears. There she stood,
beating the a