Book Two The Woman - Chapter 20 How I Came Up Out of the Dark

Some one was calling to me, a long way off.

Some one was leaning down from a great height to call to me in
the depths; and the voice was wonderfully sweet, but faint,
faint, because the height was so very high, and the depths so
very great.

And still the voice called and called, and I felt sorry that I
could not answer, because, as I say, the voice was troubled, and
wonderfully sweet.

And, little by little, it seemed that it grew nearer, this voice;
was it descending to me in these depths of blackness, or was I
being lifted up to the heights where, I knew, blackness could not
be? Ay, indeed, I was being lifted, for I could feel a hand upon
my brow--a smooth, cool hand that touched my cheek, and brushed
the hair from my forehead; a strong, gentle hand it was, with
soft fingers, and it was lifting me up and up from the loathly
depths which seemed more black and more horrible the farther I
drew from them.

And so I heard the voice nearer, and ever nearer, until I could
distinguish words, and the voice had tears in it, and the words
were very tender.

"Peter--speak!--speak to me, Peter!"

"Charmian?" said I, within myself; "why, truly, whose hand but
hers could have lifted me out of that gulf of death, back to
light and life?" Yet I did not speak aloud, for I had no mind
to, yet a while.