The impression might be from within, not from without.

Perhaps, after all, it was nothing but a dream, a miasma, a mirage, drawn by his own burning thought from the wastes and marshes of his mind peopled with illusive hopes and waterlogged by memories.

Or it might be true and real; as yet he could not be certain of its origin.
The fit passed, delightful in its overpowering emptiness, but unsatisfying as all that had gone before it, and left him weak.

For a while Morris crouched by the fire, for he had grown cold, and could not think accurately.

Then his vital, human strength returned, and, as seemed to him to be fitting upon this night of all nights, he began one by one to recall the events of that day four years ago, when Stella was still a living woman.
The scene in the Dead Church, the agonies of farewell; he summoned them detail by detail, word by word; her looks, the changes of her expression, the movements of her hands and eyes and lips; he counted and pictured each precious souvenir.