Explore "The Last Lemurian: A Westralian Romance" by G. Firth Scott on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE shock was so sudden and the blow to my senses so horrible that, for a time, I sat mutely staring at the gleaming robe which lay on the ground, and which so lately had enveloped a lovely living form. It was difficult to realise at the moment the full significance of the awful event, and I was as one in the dark, groping my way in search of some tangible reality which I could grasp, and assure myself that I was actually in a material world and not in one peopled with vapid shadows, which gathered and dispersed in the twinkling of an eye. Had it not been for the robe before me, I should have doubted my senses to the extent of attributing the whole occurrence to a mere passing delusion. But there was the robe before me, real and substantial, and within it the ashen dust was visible when I lifted up one corner.
It was too tangible a thing to be ignored, and so I was prevented from regarding all my experience as a dream, a dream of sweet and entrancing beauty mingled with grim horror and despair. It was only too real.