Then I went back as softly as I had come, but still Icould not sleep; the sight and thought of dear Leo lying there so ill had but added fuel to the fire of my unrest.My wearied body and overstrained mind awakened all my imagination into preternatural activity.Ideas, visions, almost inspirations, floated before it with startling vividness.Most of them were grotesque enough, some were ghastly, some recalled thoughts and sensations that had for years been buried in the _i_ de'bris _i_ of my past life.But behind and above them all hovered the shape of that awful woman, and through them gleamed the memory of her entrancing loveliness.Up and down the cave I strodeup and down.
Suddenly I observed, what I had not noticed before, that there was a narrow aperture in the rocky wall.Itook up the lamp and examined it; the aperture led to a passage.Now, I was still sufficiently sensible to remember that it is not pleasant, in such a situation as ours was, to have passages running into one's bed-chamber from no one knows where.If there are passages, people can come up them; they can come up when one is asleep.Partly to see where it went to, and partly from a restless desire to be doing something, I followed the passage.It led to a stone stair, which I descended; the stair ended in another passage, or rather tunnel, also hewn out of the bed-rock, and running, so far as I could judge, exactly beneath the gallery that led to the entrance of our rooms, and across the great central cave.I went on down it: it was as silent as the grave, but still, drawn by some sensation or attraction that I cannot describe, I followed on, my stockinged feet falling without noise on the smooth and rocky floor.When Ihad traversed some fifty yards of space, I came to another passage running at right angles, and here an awful thing happened to me: the sharp draught caught my lamp and extinguished it, leaving me in utter darkness in the bowels of that mysterious place.Itook a couple of strides forward so as to clear the bisecting tunnel, being terribly afraid lest I should turn up it in the dark if once I got confused as to the direction, and then paused to think.What was I to do? I had no match; it seemed awful to attempt that long journey back through the utter gloom, and yet Icould not stand there all night, and, if I did, probably it would not help me much, for in the bowels of the rock it would be as dark at midday as at midnight.I looked back over my shouldernot a sight or a sound.I peered forward down the darkness: