His prayer was not his own;
it seemed to be the Spirit wrestling with Itself, and rending his own
weak life.
He drew nearer to Marsham, resting his forehead on the bed. The
firelight threw the shadow of his gaunt kneeling figure on the white
walls. And at last, after the struggle, there seemed to be an
effluence--a descending, invading love--overflowing his own
being--enwrapping the sufferer before him--silencing the clamor of a
weeping world. And the dual mind of the modern, even in Lankester,
wavered between the two explanations: "It is myself," said the critical
intellect, "the intensification and projection of myself." "_It is
God!_" replied the soul.
Marsham, meanwhile, as the morning drew on, and as the veil of morphia
between him and reality grew thinner, was aware of a dream slowly
drifting into consciousness--of an experience that grew more vivid as it
progressed. Some one was in the room; he moved uneasily, lifted his
head, and saw indistinctly a figure in the shadows standing near the
smouldering fire. It was not his servant; and suddenly his dream mingled
with what he saw, and his heart began to throb.
"Ferrier!" he called, under his breath.
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