I moved slowly to the window, and looked out once more across the world.  I can best describe the passage of day and night, at this period, as a sort of gigantic, ponderous flicker.  Moment by moment, the acceleration of time continued; so that, at nights now, I saw the moon, only as a swaying trail of palish fire, that varied from a mere line of light to a nebulous path, and then dwindled again, disappearing periodically.

The flicker of the days and nights quickened.  The days had grown perceptibly darker, and a queer quality of dusk lay, as it were, in the atmosphere.  The nights were so much lighter, that the stars were scarcely to be seen, saving here and there an occasional hair-like line of fire, that seemed to sway a little, with the moon.

Quicker, and ever quicker, ran the flicker of day and night; and, suddenly it seemed, I was aware that the flicker had died out, and, instead, there reigned a comparatively steady light, which was shed upon all the world, from an eternal river of flame that swung up and down, North and South, in stupendous, mighty swings.

The sky was now grown very much darker, and there was in the blue of it a heavy gloom, as though a vast blackness peered through it upon the earth.  Yet, there was in it, also, a strange and awful clearness, and emptiness.  Periodically, I had glimpses of a ghostly track of fire that swayed thin and darkly toward the sun-stream; vanished and reappeared.  It was the scarcely visible moon-stream.

Looking out at the landscape, I was conscious again, of a blurring sort of ‘flitter,’ that came either from the light of the ponderous-swinging sun-stream, or was the result of the incredibly rapid changes of the earth’s surface.  And every few moments, so it seemed, the snow would lie suddenly upon the world, and vanish as abruptly, as though an invisible giant ‘flitted’ a white sheet off and on the earth.

Time fled, and the weariness that was mine, grew insupportable.  I turned from the window, and walked once across the room, the heavy dust deadening the sound of my footsteps.  Each step that I took, seemed a greater effort than the one before.  An intolerable ache, knew me in every joint and limb, as I trod my way, with a weary uncertainty.

By the opposite wall, I came to a weak pause, and wondered, dimly, what was my intent.  I looked to my left, and saw my old chair.  The thought of sitting in it brought a faint sense of comfort to my bewildered wretchedness.  Yet, because I was so weary and old and tired, I would scarcely brace my mind to do anything but stand, and wish myself past those few yards.  I rocked, as I stood.  The floor, even, seemed a place for rest; but the dust lay so thick and sleepy and black.  I turned, with a great effort of will, and made toward my chair.  I reached it, with a groan of thankfulness.  I sat down.

Everything about me appeared to be growing dim.  It was all so strange and unthought of.  Last night, I was a comparatively strong, though elderly man; and now, only a few hours later—!  I looked at the little dust-heap that had once been Pepper.  Hours! and I laughed, a feeble, bitter laugh; a shrill, cackling laugh, that shocked my dimming senses.