Book Two The Woman - Chapter 25 In Which the Reader Shall Find Little To Do With The Story - and May - Therefore - Skip

Is there anywhere in the world so damnable a place of torment as
a bed? To lie awake through the slow, dragging hours, surrounded
by a sombre quietude from whose stifling blackness thoughts, like
demons, leap to catch us by the throat; or, like waves, come
rolling in upon us, ceaselessly, remorselessly--burying us beneath
their resistless flow, catching us up, whirling us dizzily
aloft, dashing us down into depths infinite; now retreating, now
advancing, from whose oncoming terror there is no escape, until
we are once more buried beneath their stifling rush.

To lie awake, staring wide-eyed into a crowding darkness wherein
move terrors unimagined; to bury our throbbing temples in pillows
of fire; to roll and toss until the soul within us cries out in
agony, and we reach out frantic hands into a void that mocks us
by the contrast of its deep and awful quiet. At such times fair
Reason runs affrighted to hide herself, and foaming Madness fills
her throne; at such times our everyday sorrows, howsoever small
and petty they be, grow and magnify themselves until they
overflow the night, filling the universe above and around us; and
of all the woes the human mind can bear--surely Suspicion gnaws
deeper than them all!

So I lay beneath the incubus, my temples clasped tight between my
burning palms to stay the maddening ring of the hammer in my
brain. And suspicion grew into certainty, and with certainty
came madness; imagination ran riot: she was a Messalina--a Julia
--a Joan of Naples--a veritable Succuba--a thing polluted,
degraded, and abominable; and, because of her beauty, I cursed
all beautiful things, and because of her womanhood, I cursed all
women. And ever the hammer beat upon my brain, and foul shapes
danced before my eyes--shapes so insanely hideous and revolting
that, of a sudden, I rose from my bed, groaning, and coming to
the casement--leaned out.