one thing only was I fixed: here at least was no doubt or misgiving
whatever. I intended to go through what I had undertaken. Moreover, I
felt that I was strong enough to carry out my intention, whatever might
be of the Unknown--however horrible, however terrible.

When I had entered the church and closed the heavy door behind me, the
sense of darkness and loneliness in all their horror enfolded me round.
The great church seemed a living mystery, and served as an almost
terrible background to thoughts and remembrances of unutterable gloom.
My adventurous life has had its own schooling to endurance and upholding
one's courage in trying times; but it has its contra in fulness of
memory.

I felt my way forward with both hands and feet. Every second seemed as
if it had brought me at last to a darkness which was actually tangible.
All at once, and with no heed of sequence or order, I was conscious of
all around me, the knowledge or perception of which--or even speculation
on the subject--had never entered my mind. They furnished the darkness
with which I was encompassed with all the crowded phases of a dream. I
knew that all around me were memorials of the dead--that in the Crypt
deep-wrought in the rock below my feet lay the dead themselves. Some of
them, perhaps--one of them I knew--had even passed the grim portals of
time Unknown, and had, by some mysterious power or agency, come back
again to material earth. There was no resting-place for thought when I
knew that the very air which I breathed might be full of denizens of the
spirit-world. In that impenetrable blackness was a world of imagining
whose possibilities of horror were endless.

I almost fancied that I could see with mortal eyes down through that
rocky floor to where, in the lonely Crypt, lay, in her tomb of massive
stone and under that bewildering coverlet of glass, the woman whom I
love. I could see her beautiful face, her long black lashes, her sweet
mouth--which I had kissed--relaxed in the sleep of death. I could note
the voluminous shroud--a piece of which as a precious souvenir lay even
then so close to my heart--the snowy woollen coverlet wrought over in
gold with sprigs of pine, the soft dent in the cushion on which her head
must for so long have lain. I could see myself--within my eyes the
memory of that first visit--coming once again with glad step to renew
that dear sight--dear, though it scorched my eyes and harrowed my
heart--and findi