Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/374

366 away from her. . . . And she saw it all looming so darkly and so menacingly in the long, dark rooms, while she sat waiting and watching by the flickering flame of the candle.

Then her old head nodded very slowly up and down, as if to say that she recognized all the things of long ago which loomed so darkly and threateningly, that there was not a ghost which she did not recognize, but that she did not understand why they all thronged round her to-night, like a vision of menace, a dance of death. . . . And, while she sat and wondered, it was as if each dancing phantom blacked out something of the room and the present that she still saw faintly gleaming, blacked out one outline after the other with dancing phantom after dancing phantom, until at last all was black around her. . . and not only the room and the present had become black, but also the pale visions of the past: the years of childhood and girlhood; the young man whom she had married; and the children; and all the life, yonder, in the white palaces amid the tropical scenery: black, everything became black, until everything was blotted out, until the dance of all those phantoms was obliterated in shadow and the old woman, nodding her head, still sat peering into the dark, with the flickering candle beside her.

Thus she sat and waited; and, with the darkness before her, it was as if she did not see the candle, now that everything had become black. Thus she