“So would I,” said Warming.  “Aye! so would I,” with an old man’s sudden turn to self pity.  “But I shall never see him wake.”

He stood looking thoughtfully at the waxen figure.  “He will never awake,” he said at last.  He sighed.  “He will never awake again.”

CHAPTER III

THE AWAKENING

But Warming was wrong in that.  An awakening came.

What a wonderfully complex thing! this simple seeming unity—­the self!  Who can trace its reintegration as morning after morning we awaken, the flux and confluence of its countless factors interweaving, rebuilding, the dim first stirrings of the soul, the growth and synthesis of the unconscious to the subconscious, the subconscious to dawning consciousness, until at last we recognise ourselves again.  And as it happens to most of us after the night’s sleep, so it was with Graham at the end of his vast slumber.  A dim cloud of sensation taking shape, a cloudy dreariness, and he found himself vaguely somewhere, recumbent, faint, but alive.

The pilgrimage towards a personal being seemed to traverse vast gulfs, to occupy epochs.  Gigantic dreams that were terrible realities at the time, left vague perplexing memories, strange creatures, strange scenery, as if from another planet.  There was a distinct impression, too, of a momentous conversation, of a name—­he could not tell what name—­that was subsequently to recur, of some queer long-forgotten sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in darkness.  Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable confluent scenes....

Graham became aware that his eyes were open and regarding some unfamiliar thing.

It was something white, the edge of something, a frame of wood.  He moved his head slightly, following the contour of this shape.  It went up beyond the top of his eyes.  He tried to think where he might be.  Did it matter, seeing he was so wretched?  The colour of his thoughts was a dark depression.  He felt the featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour of dawn.  He had an uncertain sense of whispers and footsteps hastily receding.

The movement of his head involved a perception of extreme physical weakness.  He supposed he was in bed in the hotel at the place in the valley—­but he could not recall that white edge.  He must have slept.  He remembered now that he had wanted to sleep.  He recalled the cliff and Waterfall again, and then recollected something about talking to a passer-by....

How long had he slept?  What was that sound of pattering feet?  And that rise and fall, like the murmur of breakers on pebbles?  He put out a languid hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it was his habit to place it, and touched some smooth hard surface like glass.  This was so unexpected that it startled him extremely.  Quite suddenly he rolled over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting position.  The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and it left him giddy and weak—­and amazed.