Страница 370 из 490

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling

with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept

towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew

what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering,

crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have

robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into

their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which

it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror,

twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some

foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then,

suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing

thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead,

raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its

grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror

made him stone.

At last the door opened and his servant entered. He turned glazed

eyes upon him.