sensation of vein and muscle, of a feeling of vast
hopeless effort, the effort of a man near drowning in

darkness. Then came a panorama of dazzling unstable
confluent scenes.

Graham became aware his eyes were open and regarding
some unfamiliar thing.

It was something white, the edge of something, a
frame of wood. He moved his head slightly, following

the contour of this shape. It went up beyond the
top of his eyes. He tried to think where he might be.

Did it matter, seeing he was so wretched? The colour
of his thoughts was a dark depression. He felt the

featureless misery of one who wakes towards the hour
of dawn. He had an uncertain sense of whispers and

footsteps hastily receding.
The movement of his head involved a perception of

extreme physicalweakness. He supposed he was in
bed in the hotel at the place in the valley--but he

could not recall that white edge. He must have slept.
He remembered now that he had wanted to sleep. He

recalled the cliff and waterfall again, and then
recollected something about talking to a passer-by.

How long had he slept? What was that sound of
pattering feet? And that rise and fall, like the

murmur of breakers on pebbles? He put out a languid
hand to reach his watch from the chair whereon it

was his habit to place it, and touched some smooth
hard surface like glass. This was so unexpected that

it startled him extremely. Quite suddenly he rolled
over, stared for a moment, and struggled into a sitting

position. The effort was unexpectedly difficult, and
it left him giddy and weak--and amazed.

He rubbed his eyes. The riddle of his surroundings
was confusing but his mind was quite clear--evidently

his sleep had benefited him. He was not in a
bed at all as he understood the word, but Iying naked

on a very soft and yielding mattress, in a trough of
dark glass. The mattress was partlytransparent, a

fact he observed with a strange sense of insecurity, and
below it was a mirror reflecting him greyly. About

his arm--and he saw with a shock that his skin was
strangIy dry and yellow--was bound a curious apparatus

of rubber, bound so cunningly that it seemed
to pass into his skin above and below. And this

strange bed was placed in a case of greenish coloured
glass (as it seemed to him), a bar in the white framework

of which had first arrested his attention. In
the corner of the case was a stand of glittering and

delicately made apparatus, for the most part quite
strange appliances, though a maximum and minimum

thermometer was recognisable.
The slightlygreenish tint of the glass-like substance

which surrounded him on every hand obscured what
lay behind, but he perceived it was a vast apartment

of splendid appearance, and with a very large and
simple white archway facing him. Close to the walls

of the cage were articles of furniture, a table covered
with a silvery cloth, silvery like the side of a fish, a

couple of graceful chairs, and on the table a number
of dishes with substances piled on them, a bottle and

two glasses. He realised that he was intensely hungry.
He could see no human being, and after a period

of hesitation scrambled off the translucent mattress
and tried to stand on the clean white floor of his little

apartment. He had miscalculated his strength, however,
and staggered and put his hand against the glasslike

pane before him to steady himself. For a moment
it resisted his hand, bending outward like a distended

bladder, then it broke with a slight report and vanished--a
pricked bubble. He reeled out into the

general space of the hall, greatly astonished. He
caught at the table to save himself, knocking one of

the glasses to the floor--it rang but did not break--
and sat down in one of the armchairs.

When he had a little recovered he filled the remaining
glass from the bottle and drank--a colourless

liquid it was, but not water, with a pleasing faint
aroma and taste and a quality of immediate support

and stimulus. He put down the vessel and looked
about him.

The apartment lost none of its size and magnificence
now that the greenish transparency that had intervened

was removed. The archway he saw led to a
flight of steps, going downward without the

intermediation of a door, to a spacious transverse passage.
This passage ran between polished pillars of some

white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along
it came the sound of human movements and voices

and a deep undeviating droning note. He sat, now
fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the viands in

his attention.
Then with a shock he remembered that he was

naked, and casting about him for covering, saw a long
black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him.

This he wrapped about him and sat down again,
trembling.

His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly
he had slept. and had been removed in his sleep. But

here? And who were those people, the distant
crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He

poured out and partially drank another glass of the
colourless fluid.

What was this place?--this place that to his senses
seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive? He looked

about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment,
unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof

was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of
light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow

blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed.
"Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its

own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
He would have called out, but only a little sound

came into his throat. Then he stood up, and, with
the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way

towards the archway. He staggered down the steps,
tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had

wrapped about himself, and saved himself by catching
at one of the blue pillars.

The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple,
and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony,

brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze,
a space like the interior of some gigantic building.

Beyond and remote were vast and vague architectural
forms. The tumult of voices rose now loud and clear,

and on the balcony and with their backs to him,
gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation,

were three figures, richly dressed in loose and easy
garments of bright soft colourings. The noise of a

great multitude of people poured up over the balcony,
and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and

once some brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap
or garment thrown up into the air perhaps, flashed