How She Will Come To Me

The darkness swayed but did not lift. There was a strange rhythm in its movement, as though it were the sea, but there was no sound. Black shadows crept upon him, then slowly ebbed away. At times he was part of the darkness, at others, separate from it, yet lying upon it and wholly sustained by it.

At intervals, the swaying movement changed. His feet sank slowly in distinct pulsations until he stood almost upright, then his head began to sink and his feet to rise. When his head was far down and his feet almost directly above him, the motion changed again and he came back gradually to the horizontal, sinking back with one heart-beat and rising with the next--always a little higher.

How still it was! The silence of eternity was in that all compassing dark, which reached to the uttermost boundaries of space. It was hollow and empty, save for him, rising and falling, rising and falling, in a series of regular movements corresponding almost exactly to the ticking of a watch.

A faint, sickening odour crept through the darkness, followed by a black overwhelming shadow which threatened to engulf him in its depths. Still swaying, he waited for it calmly. All at once it was upon him, but swiftly receded. He seemed to sway backward out of it, and as he looked back upon it, gathering its forces for another attack, he saw that it was different from the darkness upon which he lay--that, instead of black, it was a deep purple.