I sat up, strangely perplexed.  For a moment, perhaps, I could not
clearly understand how I came there.  My terror had fallen from me
like a garment.  My hat had gone, and my collar had burst away from
its fastener.  A few minutes before, there had only been three real
things before me--the immensity of the night and space and nature, my
own feebleness and anguish, and the near approach of death.  Now it
was as if something turned over, and the point of view altered
abruptly.  There was no sensible transition from one state of mind to
the other.  I was immediately the self of every day again--a decent,
ordinary citizen.  The silent common, the impulse of my flight, the
starting flames, were as if they had been in a dream.  I asked myself
had these latter things indeed happened?  I could not credit it.