He went on in that murmuring tone, putting true words to the pictures that rolled clearly through me:
“... and the burning sunlight on the white walls of the building ... the cool deep shadows where we talked and slept ... the shouting of the armies in the distance ... with the glistening of the spears and shining shields ...”
Mixed curiously together, kaleidoscopic, running one into the other without sharp outlines of beginning or end, the scenes fled past me like the pages of a coloured picture-book. I saw figures plainly, more plainly than the scenery beyond. The man in the yellow robe looked close into my eyes, so close, indeed, I could almost hear him speak. He vanished, and a woman took his place. Her back was to me. She stood motionless, her hands upraised, and a gesture of passionate entreaty about her plunged me suddenly into a sea of whirling, poignant drama that had terror in it. The blood rushed to my head. My heart beat violently. I knew a moment of icy horror--that she would turn--and I should recognise her face--worse, that she would recognise my own. I experienced actual fear, a shrinking dread of something that was nameless. Escape was impossible, I could neither move nor speak, nor alter any single detail in this picture which--most terrifying of all--I knew contained somewhere too--myself. But she did not turn; I did not see her face. She vanished like the rest ... and I next saw quick, running figures with skins of reddish brown, circlets of iron about their foreheads and red tassels hanging from their loin cloths. The scene had shifted.
“... when we lit the signal fires upon the hills,” the voice of LeVallon broke in softly, looking over his shoulder lest we be disturbed, “and lay as sentinels all night beside the ashes ... till the plain showed clearly in the sunrise with the encampments marked over it like stones ...”
I saw the blue plain fading into distance, and across it a swiftly-moving cloud of dust that was ominous in character, presaging attack. Again the scene shifted noiselessly as a picture on a screen, and a deserted village slid before me, with small houses built of undressed stone, and roomy paddocks, abandoned to the wild deer from the hills. I smelt the keen, fresh air and the scent of wild flowers. A figure, carrying a small blue stick, passed with tearing rapidity up the empty street.