And under the central arch, as we stood gazing backward, I saw these words shining forth in vivid red against the blackness: “Where the fire is not quenched and the worm dieth not.”
“You will have noticed a quotation from Christ’s preaching down there,” she said as we ascended the staircase. “He was rather a wonderful kind of man. He managed to hit so exquisitely upon the truth, even in His lesser sayings.”
“Did you admire Him?” I asked, struck by a vein of seriousness that underran her words.
She looked at me rather curiously.
“As men go He was very fascinating,” she answered, but said no more.
When we were once more back in that part of the palace which was her dwelling-house she left me in the hall and I ascended to my own chamber.
Once in there alone I threw myself upon the bed and tried to think and realise. It was no use. I started up and began to walk about the room. The pain and heaviness gradually sinking round me appeared to become greater than I could bear. The horrible scenes I had witnessed still flashed before my eyes in all their terrible truth and dull despair. I vividly recalled the wild and unavailing cry of all these creatures for their lost liberty. I recognised their fearful madness—steeped in sanity so deep, that to call it madness would be a pitiable lie. Again I recognised the misty unreality that haunted them as well as me; the ghostly lights, the shadowy crucifixes all came back to me, seeming unreal, almost absurd. Was this vast palace but a shadow? Those demons shadows? Those prisoners shadows? Was Vestné a shadow? Was I a shadow?
“I am dreaming, surely, I am dreaming,” I said to myself, and then the words of the woman occurred to me. They also had thought themselves dreaming in endless night.
Suddenly I looked round the vast apartment.
Was I myself a prisoner, caged in a darkened cell, tormented with a haunting, flitting light, and dreaming myself within a gilded palace?