WHERE THE PATH BREAKS
WHERE THE PATH BREAKS
By CAPTAIN CHARLES de CRÉSPIGNY
“Only the dark, where the path breaks off
and the milestones end.”
S. B. GUNDY : : : : : TORONTO
PUBLISHER IN CANADA FOR HUMPHREY MILFORD
Copyright, 1916, by
The Century Co.
Published, March, 1916
TO THE
WONDERFUL EYES
NEVER FORGOTTEN
PART I
THE AWAKENING
CHAPTER I
In dim twilight a spark of life glittered, glintedlike a bit of mica catching the sun, on a vastface of gray cliff above a dead gray sea. There wasnothing else in the world but the vastness and thegrayness of the cliff and the sea, till the spark feltthe faint thrill of warmth which gave to it the knowledgeof its own life. “I am alive,” the whisperstirred, far down in the depths of consciousness.Next the question came, “What am I?”
At first just that infinitesimal bright glint livedwhere all the rest was dead, or creation not yet begun.Then slowly the answer followed the question: “Iam I. A man. I was a man. I am dead. This4is the twilight between worlds. I must dream back.I must know myself as I was. Later I shall wakeand know what I am.”
The soul was very still, tired after an all-but-forgottenstruggle. It was beginning to remember thatit had suffered infinitely. It was patient, with allthe patience of eternity before it. There was nohurry. Hurry and turmoil seemed strange and remote,part of some outworn experience. Lying still,it passively waited for the dream to begin. For amoment—or perhaps years—there remained only thegray blankness of the empty world; but the spark oflife grew in brightness as a star grows to visibilityin the pallor of an evening sky. Then, suddenly,a face flashed into existence—a girl’s face.
“I knew her. I loved her,” the soul rememberedwith a thrill, like a shooting ray of the star that wasitself. “Where? Who was she? What were weto each other?”
The dream began to take on definiteness. Thesoul groped back to find its body and its lost placein the world. Not this gray limbo, but the sad and5happy, the glorious and terrible world whence it hadsomehow passed.
The girl’s face faded away for an instant, andthe face of a man seemed to be reflected in a blurredmirror. The eyes of the soul looked into the man’seyes and knew them. They were his own. He wasthat man, or had been. “What a dull dog you are,”he heard himself say, as if he had said it long ago,said it often, and the echo had followed him to thistwilit place beyond death. He thought the face wasrather like a dog’s, an ugly mongrel dog’s. Thegirl could not possibly care for him! Yet some onehad told him that she did care,