The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where the Path Breaks, by Charles de Crespigny

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Title: Where the Path Breaks

Author: Charles de Crespigny

Release Date: September 25, 2010 [EBook #33995]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WHERE THE PATH BREAKS

By CAPTAIN CHARLES de CRESPIGNY

"Only the dark, where the path breaks off and the milestones end."

S. B. GUNDY--TORONTO

PUBLISHER IN CANADA FOR HUMPHREY MILFORD

Copyright, 1916, by

The Century Co.

Published, March, 1916

TO THE

WONDERFUL EYES

NEVER FORGOTTEN

PART I

THE AWAKENING

WHERE THE PATH BREAKS

CHAPTER I

In dim twilight a spark of life glittered, glinted like a bit of mica
catching the sun, on a vast face of gray cliff above a dead gray sea.
There was nothing else in the world but the vastness and the grayness
of the cliff and the sea, till the spark felt the faint thrill of
warmth which gave to it the knowledge of its own life. "I am alive,"
the whisper stirred, far down in the depths of consciousness. Next the
question came, "What am I?"

At first just that infinitesimal bright glint lived where all the rest
was dead, or creation not yet begun. Then slowly the answer followed
the question: "I am I. A man. I was a man. I am dead. This is the
twilight between worlds. I must dream back. I must know myself as I
was. Later I shall wake and know what I am."

The soul was very still, tired after an all-but-forgotten struggle. It
was beginning to remember that it had suffered infinitely. It was
patient, with all the patience of eternity before it. There was no
hurry. Hurry and turmoil seemed strange and remote, part of some
outworn experience. Lying still, it passively waited for the dream to
begin. For a moment--or perhaps years--there remained only the gray
blankness of the empty world; but the spark of life grew in brightness
as a star grows to visibility in the pallor of an evening sky. Then,
suddenly, a face flashed into existence--a girl's face.

"I