Strona 439 z 490

And yet if it had been merely an illusion, how terrible it was to

think that conscience could raise such fearful phantoms, and give

them visible form, and make them move before one! What sort of

life would his be if, day and night, shadows of his crime were to

peer at him from silent corners, to mock him from secret places,

to whisper in his ear as he sat at the feast, to wake him with

icy fingers as he lay asleep! As the thought crept through his

brain, he grew pale with terror, and the air seemed to him to

have become suddenly colder. Oh! in what a wild hour of madness

he had killed his friend! How ghastly the mere memory of the

scene! He saw it all again. Each hideous detail came back to him

with added horror. Out of the black cave of time, terrible and

swathed in scarlet, rose the image of his sin. When Lord Henry

came in at six o'clock, he found him crying as one whose heart

will break.