“I never sleep at night,” she answered, “I haven’t done it as long as I can remember.”
“But what do you do then? Are you up and about?”
“I think,” she said, and her eyes grew deep, as if night were there before her—“I lie and think and gaze out into the dark. It’s so silent then; sometimes I think that everybody is dead, and I, too. It is so calm, the dark is so weightless and soft and pure.”
Her face had grown rigidly earnest; now it suddenly glowed with nervous life, as if a thought had burst into flames within it.
“But sometimes I can hear. There is someone walking in the street, far away; the stones ring under his feet, and he is coming nearer. First I think that there is only one, and I wonder who it can be. I dream that it’s for me that he is coming, but I don’t get up; I want him to lift me from just where I am, and take me to him without saying a word, and carry me far away. Then my heart begins to throb, and there’s a ringing in my ears, and I hear many steps, a whole flood of trampling and dancing which fills the street so completely that I think the house will fall over and be swept away, as when the river breaks up the dirty ice.
“And I’m so glad that I burst out laughing and stuff the blanket into my mouth so as not to be heard. Sometimes I hear myself sing, hear it actually, and lie and stretch out my arms; and the dark is no longer still, or black, it is like red whirlpools only. And I lie and wait, and know that it’s for me they are coming, and that they’ll lift me on high and rush forward. And I know how the sky will look: black, with great white lights. And the air will be cold and clear; it will all be as if it were at the bottom of the sea. Everything we pass falls to pieces behind us; there’s a sound of broken iron and a roaring and groaning of the earth, but we hasten forward, only forward; we do not turn our heads, we say nothing to each other, only scream with joy, as when it thunders.”
Her voice had a shrill and brittle ring, jubilant, but nearer to weeping than laughter. All at once she changed her tone.
“That’s the sort of thing I think at night,” she said wearily.
“But when do you sleep? You must surely sleep.”
She gave a clear, childish laugh.