Agnes, which can only be descried through vistas that open through the
heavens.'

Such were the thoughts, thoughts often made audible, which came
spontaneously like oracles from afar, as I strode homewards with Hannah
by my side. Her, meantime, I seemed to hear; for at times I seemed and
I intended to answer her. But answer her I did not; for not ten words
of all that she said did I really and consciously hear. How I went
through that night is more entirely a blank in my memory, more entirely
a chapter of chaos and the confusion of chaos, than any other passage
the most impressive in my life. If I even slumbered for a moment, as at
intervals I did sometimes, though never sitting down, but standing or
pacing about throughout the night, and if in this way I attained a
momentary respite from self-consciousness, no sooner had I reached this
enviable state of oblivion, than some internal sting of irritation
_as_ rapidly dispersed the whole fickle fabric of sleep; and as if
the momentary trance--this fugitive beguilement of my wo--had been
conceded by a demon's subtle malice only with the purpose of barbing
the pang, by thus forcing it into a stronger relief through the
insidious peace preceding it. It is a well known and most familiar
experience to all the sons and daughters of affliction, that under no
circumstances is the piercing, lancinating torment of a recent calamity
felt so keenly as in the first moments of awaking in the morning from
the night's slumbers. Just at the very instant when the clouds of
sleep, and the whole fantastic illusions of dreaminess are dispersing,
just as the realities of life are re-assuming their steadfast forms--
re-shaping themselves--and settling anew into those fixed relations
which they are to preserve throughout the waking hours; in that
particular crisis of transition from the unreal to the real, the wo
which besieges the brain and the life-springs at the heart rushes in