I read my letters like a machine.
I have forgotten what they were about."
He stopped, and there was a long silence.
Suddenly I perceived that we were running down the incline from
Chalk Farm to Euston. I started at this passing of time. I turned
on him with a brutal question, with the tone of Now or never.
"And did you dream again?"
"Yes."
He seemed to force himself to finish. His voice was very low.
"Once more, and as it were only for a few instants. I seemed
to have suddenly awakened out of a great apathy, to have risen
into a sitting position, and the body lay there on the stones beside
me. A gaunt body. Not her, you know. So soon--it was not her. . . .
"I may have heard voices. I do not know. Only I knew clearly that
men were coming into the solitude and that that was a last outrage.
"I stood up and walked through the temple, and then there came into
sight--first one man with a yellow face, dressed in a uniform
of dirty white, trimmed with blue, and then several, climbing
to the crest of the old wall of the vanished city, and crouching
there. They were little bright figures in the sunlight, and there
they hung, weapon in hand, peering cautiously before them.
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