It came to me like a discovery that none of these things existed.
Before and after I have thought and called life a phantasmagoria, but
never have I felt its truth as I did that night.... We had parted; we
two who had kept company so long had parted. But there was, I knew, no
end to him or me. He had died a dream death, and ended a dream; his pain
dream was over. It seemed to me almost as though I had died, too. What
did it matter, since it was unreality, all of it, the pain and desire,
the beginning and the end? There was no reality except this solitary
road, this quite solitary road, along which one went rather puzzled,
rather tired....
Part of the fog became a big mastiff that came towards me and stopped
and slunk round me, growling, barked gruffly, and shortly and presently
became fog again.
My mind swayed back to the ancient beliefs and fears of our race.
My doubts and disbeliefs slipped from me like a loosely fitting garment.
I wondered quite simply what dogs bayed about the path of that other
walker in the darkness, what shapes, what lights, it might be, loomed
about him as he went his way from our last encounter on earth--along the
paths that are real, and the way that endures for ever?
IX
Last belated figure in that grouping round my uncle's deathbed is my
aunt.
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