Rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker and darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; the light sank and sank; we kept saying thi is the shadow; and we thought now it is over-this is the shadow; when suddenly the light went out.

We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead. That was the astonishing moment: and the next when as if a ball had rebounded, the cloud took colour on itself again; and so the light came back.

- Virginia Woolf, Thursday, June 30, 1927 -