condition in which he found himself. It was not that he thought of
anything in particular that was gloomy or discouraging, but that all the
ends and aims, not only of his own individual life, but of life in
general, had assumed an aspect so empty, vain, and colourless, that he
felt he would not rise from his bed for anything existence had to offer.
He recalled his usual frame of mind, in which these things seemed
attractive, with a dull wonderment that so baseless a delusion should be
so strong and so general. He wondered if it were possible that it should
ever again come over him.

The cold, grey light of earliest morning, that light which is rather the
fading of night than the coming of day, filled the room with a faint hue,
more cheerless than pitchiest darkness. A distant bell, with slow and
heavy strokes, struck three. It was the dead point in the daily
revolution of the earth's life, that point just before dawn, when men
oftenest die; when surely, but for the force of momentum, the course of
nature would stop, and at which doubtless it will one day pause
eternally, when the clock is run down. The long-drawn reverberations of
the bell, turning remoteness into music, full of the pathos of a sad and
infinite patience, died away with an effect unspeakably dreary. His
spirit, drawn forth after the vanishing vibrations, seemed to traverse
waste spaces without beginning or ending, and aeons of monotonous
duration. A sense of utter loneliness--loneliness inevitable, crushing,
eternal, the loneliness of existence, encompassed by the infinite void of
unconsciousness--enfolded him as a pall. Life lay like an incubus on his
bosom. He shuddered at the thought that death might overlook him, and
deny him its refuge. Even Madeline's face, as he conjured it up, seemed
wan and pale, moving to unutterable pity, powerless to cheer, and all the
illusions and passions of love were dim as ball-room candles in the grey
light of dawn.