There was a dull yet springy thud on the grass below. Then no more noise but the distant thunder of the traffic, and the one that woke me, until the window next mine was thrown up.
“What the devil’s up?”
The voice was rich, cheery, light-hearted, agreeable; all that my own was not as I answered “Nothing!” for this was not the first time my next-door neighbor had tried to scrape acquaintance with me.
“But surely, sir, I heard the very dickens of a row?”
“You may have done.”
“I was afraid some one had broken into your room!”
my senses swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister, without a crest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as I rose; an oily grave among them as I fell. Hill after hill of horror, valley after valley of despair! The face of the waters in petty but eternal unrest; and now the sun must shine to set