The words had fallen measuredly, deliberately, as if each aspect of the fearful picture, on the background of the tempest that gloomed out of doors, stood distinct.
There was a moment’s silence. Then the friar asked: “Was that the dream’s end?”
Gordon had turned from the window and picked up one of the written fragments. He read the last few lines aloud:
“The crowd was famished by degrees; but two
Of an enormous city did survive,
And they were enemies: they met beside
The dying embers of an altar-place
Where had been heaped a mass of holy things
For an unholy usage; they raked up,
And shivering, scraped with their cold skeleton hands