He rose to his feet, and, resting his arm against a sycamore, stood staring away from her at nothing.
She did not move.

There was a long silence.
He had wakened suddenly; the skies had been sapphire, the sward emerald, Plattville a Camelot of romance; to be there, enchantment--and now, like a meteor burned out in a breath, the necromancy fell away and he gazed into desolate years.

The thought of the Square, his dusty office, the bleak length of Main Street, as they should appear to-morrow, gave him a faint physical sickness.

To-day it had all been touched to beauty; he had felt fit to live and work there a thousand years--a fool's dream, and the waking was to emptiness.

He should die now of hunger and thirst in that Sahara; he hoped the Fates would let it be soon--but he knew they would not; knew that this was hysteria, that in his endurance he should plod on, plod, plod dustily on, through dingy, lonely years.
There was a rumble of thunder far out on the western prairie.