Philip Van Doren Stern (ed) (195 page)

It
would
come
noiselessly.
And
yet
it
would
be
heard!
It
would
roll
gently,
overwhelmingly,
like
some
new
and
unimaginable
thunder
        

"No
.
.
.
!"
I
said
in
panic
to
my
soul,
as
I
trod
cautiously
from that
behind.

"Great
God!"
I
thought,
as
I
stood
somewhere,
for
now
I
had
lost all
direction,
and
was
nowhere.
"Great
God,
what
shall
I
do?"

I
lowered
myself
secretly
to
the
ground,
groping
with
a
blind
hand to
make
sure
that
nothing
was
there. "I
will
try
to
sleep,"
I
said
in
my
mind.

Nay,
I
said
it
to
my
mind;
striving
to
command
that
which
I
had never
learned
to
control.
I
huddled
my
knees
up
and
curved
my
chin forward
like
a
sleeping
dog.
I
covered
my
face
with
my
hands,
and
was still
as
the
stone
on
which
I
lay.

"I
will
try
to
sleep,"
I
said.
"I
will
think
of
God,"
I
said.

And
it
seemed
to
me
that
God
was
the
blankness
behind,
which might
advance.
And
that
nothing
was
so
awful
as
the
thought
of
Him —unimaginable
and
real!
withheld,
and
imminent,
and
threatening, and
terrific!
My
knees
were
listening
for
Him
to
the
front
of
me:
my back
was
hearkening
from
behind;
and
my
brain
was
engaged
elsewhere
in
matters
which
I
could
not
cognise.

"If
I
were
to
speak
aloud!"
I
thought.

And
some
part
of
my
mind
dared
me
to
do
so;
wheedled
at
me
to utter
one
clapping
shout:
but
I
knew
that
at
the
sound
of
a
voice,
of even
my
own
voice,
I
should
die
as
at
a
stroke.

1 2 £te>

How
long
did
that
last?
Was
it
an
hour,
a
year,
a
lifetime?

Time
ceases
when
emotion
begins,
and
its
mechanical
spacings
are
then
of
no
more
account.
Where
is
time
when
we
sleep?
Where
is
it when
we
are
angry?
There
is
no
time,
there
is
but
consciousness
and its
experiences.

I
stayed
where
I
had
lain
myself,
and
whether
my
eyes
were
open
or closed
I
no
longer
knew.
The
miseries
of
this
place
had
abated.
No, that
does
not
express
it,
for
this
was
no
longer
a
place.
This
place
had disappeared,
or
it
had
been
merged
in
the
new
dimension
which
I
call Nowhere.

It
is
immeasurably
great;
it
is
unimaginably
small:
for
as
there
is
no time
so
there
is
no
space:
there
is
only
being,
and
its
modes:
and
in that
region
my
misery
continued
itself
far
from
the
knowledge
of
this brain
and
beyond
the
let
or
hindrance
of
this
body.

And
yet
somewhere,
somehow,
I
knew
something
that
I
can
only think
of
as
nothing.
An
awful,
a
deadly
business
was
proceeding,
with me
as
the
subject.
It
can
only
be
expressed
negatively.
Thus
I
may phrase
it,
I
had
gone
in
the
spirit
into
that
aperture
from
which
I
had fled.
I
was
in
contact
with
the
unmanifest,
and
that,
in
its
own
sphere, is
as
competent
and
enduring
as
are
its
extensions
with
which
we
are familiar.
But
of
that
I
cannot
speak;
for
as
it
was
out
of
range
of
these senses
so
it
was
out
of
range
of
this
mind
whose
sole
preoccupation
is these
senses.