For a while, I must have dozed.  Then I opened my eyes, with a start.  Somewhere across the room, there had been a muffled noise of something falling.  I looked, and saw, vaguely, a cloud of dust hovering above a pile of debris.  Nearer the door, something else tumbled, with a crash.  It was one of the cupboards; but I was tired, and took little notice.  I closed my eyes, and sat there in a state of drowsy, semi-unconsciousness.  Once or twice—­as though coming through thick mists—­I heard noises, faintly.  Then I must have slept.

XVI

THE AWAKENING

I awoke, with a start.  For a moment, I wondered where I was.  Then memory came to me....

The room was still lit with that strange light—­half-sun, half-moon, light.  I felt refreshed, and the tired, weary ache had left me.  I went slowly across to the window, and looked out.  Overhead, the river of flame drove up and down, North and South, in a dancing semi-circle of fire.  As a mighty sleigh in the loom of time it seemed—­in a sudden fancy of mine—­to be beating home the picks of the years.  For, so vastly had the passage of time been accelerated, that there was no longer any sense of the sun passing from East to West.  The only apparent movement was the North and South beat of the sun-stream, that had become so swift now, as to be better described as a quiver.

As I peered out, there came to me a sudden, inconsequent memory of that last journey among the Outer worlds.  I remembered the sudden vision that had come to me, as I neared the Solar System, of the fast whirling planets about the sun—­as though the governing quality of time had been held in abeyance, and the Machine of a Universe allowed to run down an eternity, in a few moments or hours.  The memory passed, along with a, but partially comprehended, suggestion that I had been permitted a glimpse into further time spaces.  I stared out again, seemingly, at the quake of the sun-stream.  The speed seemed to increase, even as I looked.  Several lifetimes came and went, as I watched.

Suddenly, it struck me, with a sort of grotesque seriousness, that I was still alive.  I thought of Pepper, and wondered how it was that I had not followed his fate.  He had reached the time of his dying, and had passed, probably through sheer length of years.  And here was I, alive, hundreds of thousands of centuries after my rightful period of years.

For, a time, I mused, absently.  ‘Yesterday—­’ I stopped, suddenly.  Yesterday!  There was no yesterday.  The yesterday of which I spoke had been swallowed up in the abyss of years, ages gone.  I grew dazed with much thinking.

Presently, I turned from the window, and glanced ’round the room.  It seemed different—­strangely, utterly different.  Then, I knew what it was that made it appear so strange.  It was bare:  there was not a piece of furniture in the room; not even a solitary fitting of any sort.  Gradually, my amazement went, as I remembered, that this was but the inevitable end of that process of decay, which I had witnessed commencing, before my sleep.  Thousands of years!  Millions of years!