If it be true that men live in thoughts rather than in deeds, if the changing phantoms of our brain carve deeper impressions than the petty part we play with our hands, then, indeed, that frightful night would form by far the longest chapter in the history of my soul. Darkness, darkness, darkness; quivering, soundless, hopeless night. I feared to move, and no sense save that of hearing bound me to the world of living men. Living men? What place had I among them? A party of drunken roisterers staggered beneath the window, singing coarse songs and bandying their brutal jests. But it no longer interested me to know the window opened on a street. Hour after hour plodded in slow procession through the night. Outside, a clattering vehicle whipped past over the rough stones, the driver swearing at his team. The day was coming at last. Did I wish it? Perhaps the night were kinder, for it at least obscured my misery. I almost prayed the darkness might last. CHAPTER XI THE DAWN AND THE DUSK Gradually, so gradually the change could hardly be observed, the inner grating of the window became visible; the chinks between the edges of the stones assumed distinctness. A ghostly blotch grew into a fact upon the floor. A leaden hue, less black than the pulsing sea of ink about it, spread and spread, lighter and lighter, until it invaded the dim recesses where I stood. My hand became once more a tangible possession, unreal and grim, yet all my own. The opposite wall loomed up, my utmost frontier of the domain of certainty. Dimmer, darker, more obscure, the door, a vast unexplored cavern gathered to itself the hobgoblins of evil and gave them shelter. As still as the creeping on of day we two men stood, glaring at each other and watched it come. Exactly when I began to see him I could not say. Every impulse and vital force of nature centered in my eyes, and they fastened themselves upon that one irregular shadow in the opposing corner which slowly--oh! with such agonizing slowness--assumed the outlines of a man. My fascinated gaze wandered not nor wearied. When in the moist light of the morning I clearly saw Broussard, haggard, pale and sunken-eyed, watching me thirty feet away, it seemed that I had seen him all the night.