Long he lay, this man returned from the Borderland of the Unknown, and
stared weakly at the familiar sights that were yet touched with a
puzzling strangeness.
It seemed that this was all as it should be, and yet there was
something lacking,--a great gap, whose images and happenings were wiped
out as a cloth wipes clean a slate,--a space of darkness, of
blankness, whose empty void held prescience of some great sadness. He
lay on his side facing the fire, and twice he thought to speak to
Ridgar with a question of this strangeness, and each time he was
conscious of a vast surprise that the man did not answer.
His lips, so long unused to sane direction, had made no sound in the
roar of the night.
And then Ridgar, drawn by that intangible sense of eyes upon him,
raised his head; and, as their glances met, that great void flashed
suddenly into full panoply of life peopled with a ring of painted faces
against the background of a night forest, a leaping fire, and the
heroic figure of a tall woman who stood in the dancing light and threw
a hatchet at a painted post.
Ridgar's eyes, as he had seen them in the dimness of the outskirts of
that massed circle, brought back the lost period of time and all that
had passed therein.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303