It seemed to him that there was safety in concealment.

Where could he hide to be inconspicuous when the lights returned?
At last he sat down upon a seat in a recess on one of the higher ways, conceiving he was alone there.
He squeezed his knuckles into his weary eyes.

Suppose when he looked again he found the dark trough of parallel ways and that intolerable altitude of edifice gone.

Suppose he were to discover the whole story of these last few days, the awakening, the shouting multitudes, the darkness and the fighting, a phantasmagoria, a new and more vivid sort of dream.
It must be a dream; it was so inconsecutive, so reasonless.

Why were the people fighting for him?
Why should this saner world regard him as Owner and Master?
So he thought, sitting blinded, and then he looked again, half hoping in spite of his ears to see some familiar aspect of the life of the nineteenth century, to see, perhaps, the little harbour of Boscastle about him, the cliffs of Pentargen, or the bedroom of his home.