Silently, years moved on.  What period of time passed, I shall never know.  It seemed to me, waiting there, that eternities came and went, stealthily; and still I watched.  I could see only the glow of the sun’s edge, at times; for now, it had commenced to come and go—­lighting up a while, and again becoming extinguished.

All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cut across the night—­a quick glare that lit up the dead earth, shortly; giving me a glimpse of its flat lonesomeness.  The light appeared to come from the sun—­shooting out from somewhere near its center, diagonally.  A moment, I gazed, startled.  Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloom fell again.  But now it was not so dark; and the sun was belted by a thin line of vivid, white light.  I stared, intently.  Had a volcano broken out on the sun?  Yet, I negatived the thought, as soon as formed.  I felt that the light had been far too intensely white, and large, for such a cause.

Another idea there was, that suggested itself to me.  It was, that one of the inner planets had fallen into the sun—­becoming incandescent, under that impact.  This theory appealed to me, as being more plausible, and accounting more satisfactorily for the extraordinary size and brilliance of the blaze, that had lit up the dead world, so unexpectedly.

Full of interest and emotion, I stared, across the darkness, at that line of white fire, cutting the night.  One thing it told to me, unmistakably:  the sun was yet rotating at an enormous speed.[11] Thus, I knew that the years were still fleeting at an incalculable rate; though so far as the earth was concerned, life, and light, and time, were things belonging to a period lost in the long gone ages.

After that one burst of flame, the light had shown, only as an encircling band of bright fire.  Now, however, as I watched, it began slowly to sink into a ruddy tint, and, later, to a dark, copper-red color; much as the sun had done.  Presently, it sank to a deeper hue; and, in a still further space of time, it began to fluctuate; having periods of glowing, and anon, dying.  Thus, after a great while, it disappeared.

Long before this, the smoldering edge of the sun had deadened into blackness.  And so, in that supremely future time, the world, dark and intensely silent, rode on its gloomy orbit around the ponderous mass of the dead sun.

My thoughts, at this period, can be scarcely described.  At first, they were chaotic and wanting in coherence.  But, later, as the ages came and went, my soul seemed to imbibe the very essence of the oppressive solitude and dreariness, that held the earth.

With this feeling, there came a wonderful clearness of thought, and I realized, despairingly, that the world might wander for ever, through that enormous night.  For a while, the unwholesome idea filled me, with a sensation of overbearing desolation; so that I could have cried like a child.  In time, however, this feeling grew, almost insensibly, less, and an unreasoning hope possessed me.  Patiently, I waited.