.

.

And I had yet to go through some ordeal which, even to her who had passed and repassed the portals of death, was full of fear.
It was a merciful relief to me when, in groping my way forwards through the darkness, I struck against some portion of the furnishing of the church.

Fortunately I was all strung up to tension, else I should never have been able to control instinctively, as I did, the shriek which was rising to my lips.
I would have given anything to have been able to light even a match.

A single second of light would, I felt, have made me my own man again.