She
did not know whither she was borne, and still they went quickly, quickly;
and the hurricane itself would have lagged behind them. At last their
motion ceased; and Oliver was holding her arm.
'Don't be afraid,' he said. 'Open your eyes and stand up.'
The night had fallen; but it was not the comfortable night that soothes
the troubled minds of mortal men; it was a night that agitated the soul
mysteriously so that each nerve in the body tingled. There was a lurid
darkness which displayed and yet distorted the objects that surrounded
them. No moon shone in the sky, but small stars appeared to dance on the
heather, vague night-fires like spirits of the damned. They stood in a
vast and troubled waste, with huge stony boulders and leafless trees,
rugged and gnarled like tortured souls in pain. It was as if there had
been a devastating storm, and the country reposed after the flood of
rain and the tempestuous wind and the lightning. All things about them
appeared dumbly to suffer, like a man racked by torments who has not the
strength even to realize that his agony has ceased.
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