How different the nights had seemed when I was without shelter, before I had rediscovered fire! How had I endured it?
That strange ghostly gloom of the woods at night-time full of innumerable strange shapes; still and dark, yet with something seen at times moving amidst them, dark and vague and strange also--an owl, perhaps, or bat, or great winged moth, or nightjar.

Nor had I any choice then but to listen to the night-sounds of the forest; and they were various as the day-sounds, and for every day-sound, from the faintest lisping and softest trill to the deep boomings and piercing cries, there was an analogue; always with something mysterious, unreal in its tone, something proper to the night.

They were ghostly sounds, uttered by the ghosts of dead animals; they were a hundred different things by turns, but always with a meaning in them, which I vainly strove to catch--something to be interpreted only by a sleeping faculty in us, lightly sleeping, and now, now on the very point of awaking! Now the gloom and the mystery were shut out; now I had that which stood in the place of pleasure to me, and was more than pleasure.

It was a mournful rapture to lie awake now, wishing not for sleep and oblivion, hating the thought of daylight that would come at last to drown and scare away my vision.

To be with Rima again--my lost Rima recovered--mine, mine at last! No longer the old vexing doubt now--"You are you, and I am I--why is it ?"--the question asked when our souls were near together, like two raindrops side by side, drawing irresistibly nearer, ever nearer: for now they had touched and were not two, but one inseparable drop, crystallized beyond change, not to be disintegrated by time, nor shattered by death's blow, nor resolved by any alchemy.
I had other company besides this unfailing vision and the bright dancing fire that talked to me in its fantastic fire language.