The Argosy — page 17: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 Lady Valeria. very tired and thought I should sleep directly, and so I did, but oh! the pain and weariness of such sleep. It was crowded with frag- ments of visions that I tried again and again to see clearly, and yet dreaded to see, for I knew they were terrible, every one. Black, rolling clouds full of dreadful shapes came closing in on me, and I was fighting them off with all my might when someone behind me called ‘Open, and let the secret be made plain to her.’ Then another voice replied ‘What will befall is written—is written.’ Then the clouds parted, and I saw before me the days of the weeks to come, one after the other sliding along like great globes of luminous light or rings of shining smoke with figures stirring in them. I could see myself looking out of every one, and other faces that I knew, and I counted till I came to to-day, and then I saw you.” “Not unlikely. You knew which day you were coming to Folke- stone and were thinking about it.” She shook her head. ‘‘I had seen you in all the others, not as you look now, but in a red coat, or a dark blue one with braid, and gold on your cap. ‘To-day you were standing looking as you did that night de “Quite right. J shall wear mufti to-night. I am going to dine at the West Cliff with some people,” he annotated. She shivered. ‘“ And then over you fell a great black cloud—a pall. I knew it was, and it sank and hid you. Day after day passed and I looked for you, and still came only blackness, till seven days had gone, and then all else melted away and you were lying with a white sheet over you, and when [I lifted it your dead eyes stared up at me, and through all was the sound of the sea!” Her voice sank to a whisper of horror, her face grew as ghastly white as the vision that still held her imagination. Edric felt uncomfort- able, though unbelieving. “Tt’s a coincidence,” he said, ‘an unpleasant coincidence, that you and somebody else should have pitched upon this week as a bad time for me. Well, we can’t tell what may be the worth of your warning till the week’s over, can we? And then it won’t be much use. Perhaps it means a wedding? Dreams go by contraries, you know. Was that alle” Elsie shook her head. ‘Tt came again,” she went on, in the same low, awe-stricken tone ; “the same again, and the third time I could bear it no longer and struggled with the shapes, and beat and crushed them with my hands, and fought till they rolled down before me in a glittering downfall of fragments. And I was holding one that suddenly grew warm and clasped my hand in return, and—and ” She stopped, then with an odd mixture of confusion and determination in her pretty face went on boldly: “It was your hand, just as you hold mine now. I saw it as plainly as I do now, and I dropped it—” here the parallel was ECORMMICOOOKS.E@