It flowed over me like a sea and seemed to swallow up my being, so that even the wildest and most dangerous beast would have been welcome as a companion.

I was as terrified as a child that wakes to find itself deserted in the dark.
Also an uncanny sense of terrors to come oppressed me, till I could have cried aloud if only to hear the sound of a mortal voice.

Yonder was the grim statue of Fate, the Oracle of the Kings of the Sons of Wisdom, which was believed to bow its stony head in answer to their prayers.

I ran to it, eager for its terrible shelter, for on either side of it were figures of human beings.

Even their cold marble was company of a sort, though alas! over all frowned Fate.
Let anyone imagine himself standing alone beneath the dome of St.
Paul's; in the centre of that cathedral brilliant with mysterious light, and stretched all about it a London that had been dead and absolutely unpeopled for tens of thousands of years.