Strangely enough, this altitude seemed to create a certain dead
polarity between him and them. They lay sullenly outside his brain,
repelled by this dead polarity, and he looked at them languidly,
against the dim illumination of the window, with a dull joy that they
could not come near him and enter the realm of his thoughts. All this
was the fever.
In a little time these events became endowed with more palpable bodies
which moved. The square of semilucent window faded into something
indescribable, and that into something indescribable, and that into
something else, still indescribable.
They moved swiftly, and things happened. He found himself suddenly in a
long gallery, half in the dusk, half in the lamplight, pacing slowly
back and forth, waiting for something, he knew not what. To him came a
bustling motherly old woman with a maid's cap on, who said, "Sure,
Master Ben, the moon is shining, and, let me tell ye, at the end of the
hall is a balcony of iron, and Miss Mary will be glad you know that
same." And at that he seemed to himself to be hunting for a coin with
which to tip her. He discovered it turned to lead between his fingers,
whereupon the old woman laughed shrilly and disappeared, and he found
himself alone on the prairie at midnight.
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