But now what was this sense of undefined dread
that came upon me and would not let me rest? Why did I move from room
to room? and what was goading me? Something was stirring like a blind
creature across my brain, and it was too hideous to confront. Why
_should_ I confront it? Why scare one's soul and lacerate one's heart
at every dark fear that peeps through the door of imagination, when
experience teaches us that out of every hundred such dark fears
ninety-nine are sure to turn out mere magic-lantern bogies?
The evening wore on, and yet I _would_ not face this phantom fear,
though it refused to quit me.
The servants went to bed quite early that night, and when the butler
came to ask me if I should 'want anything more,' I said 'only a
candle,' and went up to my bedroom.
'I will turn into bed,' I said, 'and sleep over it. The idea is a
figment of an over-wrought brain. Destiny would never play any man a
trick like that which I have dared to dream of. Among human
calamities it would be at once the most shocking and the most
whimsical--this imaginary woe that scares me.
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