Occasionally she stole a glance through her thick vail toward her three fellow passengers, who sat opposite to her, on the back seat—three silent, black-shrouded figures who sat mute and motionless as watchers of the dead.
Very terrifying, but very appropriate figures to take part in her nightmare dream.
She turned her eyes away from those silent, shrouded, mysterious figures, and prayed to awake.
She could not yet.
But as she peered out through the darkness of the night, and saw the black shadows of the roadway flying behind her as the train sped southward, her physical powers gradually succumbed to fatigue, and her waking dream passed off in a dreamless sleep.
She slept long and profoundly. She slept through many brief stoppages and startings at the little way stations. She slept until she was rudely awakened by the uproar incident upon the arrival of the train at a large town.
She awoke in confusion. Day was dawning. Many passengers were leaving the train. Many others were getting on it.
She rubbed her eyes and looked around in amazement and terror. She did not in the least know where she was, or how she had come there.
For during her deep and dreamless sleep she had utterly forgotten the occurrences of the last twenty-four hours.
Now she was rudely awakened, bewildered, and frightened to find herself in a strange scene, amid alarming circumstances, of which she knew or could remember nothing; connected with which she only felt the deep impression of some heavy preceding calamity. She saw before her the three silent, black, shrouded forms of her fellow-passengers, but their presence, instead of enlightening, only deepened and darkened the gloomy mystery.