I see again the rainy shore that I saw before time was, before earth’s drama was unfolded; and the woman on the sands.  She moans and weeps, among the pictures which the clouds of mortality offer and withdraw, amid that which weaves the rain.  She speaks so low that I feel it is to me she speaks.  She is one with me.  Love—­it comes back to me.  Love is an unhappy man and unhappy woman.

I awake—­uttering the feeble cry of the babe new-born.

All grows pale, and paler.  The whiteness I foresaw through the whirlwinds and clamors—­it is here.  An odor of ether recalls to me the memory of an awful memory, but shapeless.  A white room, white walls, and white-robed women who bend over me.

In a voice confused and hesitant, I say: 

“I’ve had a dream, an absurd dream.”

My hand goes to my eyes to drive it away.

“You struggled while you were delirious—­especially when you thought you were falling,” says a calm voice to me, a sedate and familiar voice, which knows me without my knowing the voice.

“Yes,” I say!

CHAPTER XVII

MORNING

I went to sleep in Chaos, and then I awoke like the first man.

I am in a bed, in a room.  There is no noise—­a tragedy of calm, and horizons close and massive.  The bed which imprisons me is one of a row that I can see, opposite another row.  A long floor goes in stripes as far as the distant door.  There are tall windows, and daylight wrapped in linen.  That is all which exists.  I have always been here, I shall end here.

Women, white and stealthy, have spoken to me.  I picked up the new sound, and then lost it.  A man all in white has sat by me, looked at me, and touched me.  His eyes shone strangely, because of his glasses.

I sleep, and then they make me drink.

The long afternoon goes by in the long corridor.  In the evening they make light; at night, they put it out, and the lamps—­which are in rows, like the beds, like the windows, like everything—­disappear.  Just one lamp remains, in the middle, on my right.  The peaceful ghost of dead things enjoins peace.  But my eyes are open, I awake more and more.  I take hold of consciousness in the dark.

A stir is coming to life around me among the prostrate forms aligned in the beds.  This long room is immense; it has no end.  The enshrouded beds quiver and cough.  They cough on all notes and in all ways, loose, dry, or tearing.  There is obstructed breathing, and gagged breathing, and polluted, and sing-song.  These people who are struggling with their huge speech do not know themselves.  I see their solitude as I see them.  There is nothing between the beds, nothing.