I saw now, that the sun had risen high into the heavens, and was still visibly moving.  It passed above the house, with an extraordinary sailing kind of motion.  As the window came into shadow, I saw another extraordinary thing.  The fine-weather clouds were not passing, easily, across the sky—­they were scampering, as though a hundred-mile-an-hour wind blew.  As they passed, they changed their shapes a thousand times a minute, as though writhing with a strange life; and so were gone.  And, presently, others came, and whisked away likewise.

To the West, I saw the sun, drop with an incredible, smooth, swift motion.  Eastward, the shadows of every seen thing crept toward the coming greyness.  And the movement of the shadows was visible to me—­a stealthy, writhing creep of the shadows of the wind-stirred trees.  It was a strange sight.

Quickly, the room began to darken.  The sun slid down to the horizon, and seemed, as it were, to disappear from my sight, almost with a jerk.  Through the greyness of the swift evening, I saw the silver crescent of the moon, falling out of the Southern sky, toward the West.  The evening seemed to merge into an almost instant night.  Above me, the many constellations passed in a strange, ‘noiseless’ circling, Westward.  The moon fell through that last thousand fathoms of the night-gulf, and there was only the starlight....

About this time, the buzzing in the corner ceased; telling me that the clock had run down.  A few minutes passed, and I saw the Eastward sky lighten.  A grey, sullen morning spread through all the darkness, and hid the march of the stars.  Overhead, there moved, with a heavy, everlasting rolling, a vast, seamless sky of grey clouds—­a cloud-sky that would have seemed motionless, through all the length of an ordinary earth-day.  The sun was hidden from me; but, from moment to moment, the world would brighten and darken, brighten and darken, beneath waves of subtle light and shadow....

The light shifted ever Westward, and the night fell upon the earth.  A vast rain seemed to come with it, and a wind of a most extraordinary loudness—­as though the howling of a nightlong gale, were packed into the space of no more than a minute.

This noise passed, almost immediately, and the clouds broke; so that, once more, I could see the sky.  The stars were flying Westward, with astounding speed.  It came to me now, for the first time, that, though the noise of the wind had passed, yet a constant ‘blurred’ sound was in my ears.  Now that I noticed it, I was aware that it had been with me all the time.  It was the world-noise.

And then, even as I grasped at so much comprehension, there came the Eastward light.  No more than a few heartbeats, and the sun rose, swiftly.  Through the trees, I saw it, and then it was above the trees.  Up—­up, it soared and all the world was light.  It passed, with a swift, steady swing to its highest altitude, and fell thence, Westward.  I saw the day roll visibly over my head.  A few light clouds flittered Northward, and vanished.  The sun went down with one swift, clear plunge, and there was about me, for a few seconds, the darker growing grey of the gloaming.