Adjacently, on the upper reaches of Broadway, Ma Tamby was shopping. The
sun now, gone from the river, was painting other spheres. From a corner,
shadows crept. They devoured the floor, absorbed the piano, assimilated
the room. They left pits where they passed. They enveloped Cassy.
Suddenly, she shivered.
She had been far away, outside of the world, in a region to which the
clamouring street could not mount. Her thoughts had lifted her to a land
that had the colours, clear and yet capricious, of which dreams are
made. There beauty stood, and truth with beauty, and so
indistinguishably that the two were one. But truth, detaching herself,
showed her candid face. The shadows elongating, reached up and darkened
it. The candour remained, but the candour had become terrible. Cassy saw
it. She saw that the land to which she had been lifted was the land of
beauty and horror. It was then she shivered.
Instantly something touched her. There was no one. The land, the beauty,
the horror had faded. No longer on the heights, she was in a trivial
room in Harlem. She was awake. She was absolutely alone. None the less
something that was nothing, something invisible, inaudible, intangible,
imperceptible, something emanating from the depths where events crouch,
prepared to pounce, had touched her. She knew it, she felt it. Her
impulse was to scream, to rush away. But from what? It was all
imaginary. Common-sense, that can be so traitorous, told her that. Then,
immediately, before the wireless from the unknown, which modern
occultism calls the impact, could impel her, the room was invaded.
Ma Tamby, tramping in, switching on the lights, was exclaiming and
gesticulating at her and at Paliser, who had followed and who was
standing in the doorway.
"Dearie! For God's sake! The child's asleep! In all my born days I never
knew the likes of that!"