It was weird and awful.

I clung to Richard's hand in silence.

He led me across the hall, and stopped before the library-door.
He let go my hand, and taking a key from his pocket, put it in the lock, turned it slowly, then opened the door a little way, and motioned me to enter.
Like one in a trance, I obeyed him, and went in alone.

He shut the door noiselessly, and left me with the dead.
That was the great, the immense hour of my life.

No vicissitude, no calamity of this mortal state, no experience that may be to come, can ever have the force, the magnitude of this.