Page:Fantastics and other Fancies.djvu/238

 him. And while the body shrank and sank into dust, the phantom man found no rest in the darkness, and thought dimly to himself: "I am even too weary to find peace!"

There was a thin crevice in the ancient wall of the tomb. And through it, and through the meshes of a web that a spider had woven athwart it, the dead looked and beheld the amethystine blaze of the summer sky,—and pliant pahns bending in the warm wind,—and the opaline glow of the horizon, and fair pools bearing images of cypresses inverted,—and the birds that flitted from tomb to tomb and sang,—and flowers in the shadow of the sepulchres. . . . And the vast bright world seemed to him not so hateful as before.

Likewise the sounds of life assailed the faint senses of the dead through the thin crevice in the wall of the tomb:—always the far-off, drowsy murmur made by the toiling of the city's heart; sometimes sounds of passing converse and of steps,—echoes of music and of laughter,—chanting and chattering of children at play,—and the liquid babble of beautiful brown women.

. . . So that the dead man dreamed of life