Page:Rowland--In the shadow.djvu/62



ATIGUED by the excitement of the day, Virginia retired early that night. Her sleep was restless; there is a certain kind of sleep less refreshing than actual wakefulness; a condition of subconsciousness in which a leading impression, variously contorted, is passed and repassed before the tired mind. The unwelcome tenant of Virginia's mind was Dessalines.

Repeatedly she fully aroused herself; striving, through the domination of her subjective brain, to bring the cold light of analysis to bear upon the somber-hued fancies which were robbing her rest. After demonstrating the hollowness of the black aura cloaking her dreams she would turn resolutely to sleep and forgetfulness, but with waning will and drowsing mental vigilance the disturbing fancies would sneak back stealthily to join in howling chorus—a pack of prairie wolves, scattered by a firebrand. With these there would glide from some abyss a growing series of late, powerful impressions; morbid, exotic, blurred, distorted, like most dream bodies, growing fantastically out of their true shape.

The waking mind unconsciously resists thousands of disquieting elements, as the bodily tissues constantly resist the assaults of myriad bacteria; over the greater part of these mentally irritative elements a natural sleep will spread an obliterating blanket, as a light fall of snow 52