In actual fact he had made such a leap in time as romancers have imagined again and again.
And that fact realised, he had been prepared.

His mind had, as it were, seated itself for a spectacle.

And no spectacle unfolded itself, but a great vague danger, unsympathetic shadows and veils of darkness.
Somewhere through the labyrinthine obscurity his death sought him.

Would he, after all, be killed before he saw?
It might be that even at the next corner his destruction ambushed.

A great desire to see, a great longing to know, arose in him.
He became fearful of corners.