While this pause occurred, and while I stood wondering, bewildered, understanding nothing, there came over me a darkness, a blackness, a sense of misery such as never in all my life, though I have known troubles enough, I had felt before. All that had happened to me throughout my existence seemed to rise pale and terrible in a hundred scenes before me, all momentary, intense, as if each was the present moment. And in each of these scenes I saw what I had never seen before. I saw where I had taken the wrong instead of the right step--in what wantonness, with what self-will it had been done; how God (I shuddered at the name) had spoken and called me, and even entreated, and I had withstood and refused. All the evil I had done came back, and spread itself out before my eyes; and I loathed it, yet knew that I had chosen it, and that it would be with me for ever. I saw it all in the twinkling of an eye, in a moment, while I stood there, and all men with me, in the horror of awful thought. Then it ceased as it had come, instantaneously, and the noise and the laughter, and the quarrels and cries, and all the commotion of this new bewildering place, in a moment began again. I had seen no one while this strange paroxysm lasted. When it disappeared, I came to myself emerging as from a dream, and looked into the face of the man whose words, not careless like mine, had brought it upon us. Our eyes met, and his were surrounded by curves and lines of anguish which were terrible to see. ‘Well,’ he said, with a short laugh, which was forced and harsh, ‘how do you like it? that is what happens when---- If it came often, who could endure it?’ He was not like the rest. There was no sneer upon his face, no gibe at my simplicity. Even now, when all had recovered, he was still quivering with something that looked like a nobler pain. His face was very grave, the lines deeply drawn in it, and he seemed to be seeking no amusement or distraction, nor to take any part in the noise and tumult which was going on around. ‘Do you know what that cry meant?’ he said. ‘Did you hear that cry? It was some one who saw--even here once in a long time, they say, it can be seen----’ ‘What can be seen?’ He shook his head, looking at me with a meaning which I could not interpret. It was beyond the range of my thoughts. I came to know after, or I never could have made this record. But on that subject he said no more. He turned the way I was going, though it mattered nothing what way I went, for all were the same to me. ‘You are one of the new-comers?’ he said; ‘you have not been long here----’ ‘Tell me,’ I cried, ‘what you mean by _here_. Where are we? How can one tell who has fallen--he knows not whence or where? What is this place? I have never seen anything like it. It seems to me that I hate it already, though I know not what it is.’