He bade Gil good night. Ways of banditti in any
age or place were much the same!
The room was small, with a rude and narrow bed. There was a window,
small, too, but open to the night. Pouring through this there entered
a vagrant procession of sound, with, in the interstices, a silence
that had its own voice. As the night deepened the procession thinned,
at last died away.
When he undressed he had taken the letter to Senor Nobody and put it
upon the table. Now, lying still and straight upon the bed in the dark
room, there seemed a blacker darkness where it lay, four feet from
him, a little above the level of his eyes. There it was, a square, a
cube, of Egyptian night, hard, fierce, black, impenetrable.
For a long time he kept a fixed gaze upon it. Beyond and above it
glimmered the window. The larger square at last drew his eyes. He lay
another long while, very still, with the window before him. Lying so,
thought at last grew quiet, hushed, subdued. Very quietly, very
sweetly, like one long gone, loved in the past, returning home, there
slipped into view, borne upon the stream of consciousness, an old mood
of stillness, repose, dawn-light by which the underneath of things was
seen. Once it had come not infrequently, then blackness and hardness
had whelmed it and it came no more. He had almost forgotten the feel
of it.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274