"You asked--and now you must listen." She was silent; and when once more she spoke her voice was low, curiously rhythmic; her eyes rapt: "I was free--free from every human fetter of fear or sorrow or love or hate; free even of hope--for what was there to hope for when everything desirable was mine?
And I was elemental; one with the eternal things yet fully conscious that I was--I.
"It was as though I were the shining shadow of a star afloat upon the breast of some still and hidden woodland pool; as though I were a little wind dancing among the mountain tops; a mist whirling down a quiet glen; a shimmering lance of the aurora pulsing in the high solitudes.
"And there was music--strange and wondrous music and terrible, but not terrible to me--who was part of it.

Vast chords and singing themes that rang like clusters of little swinging stars and harmonies that were like the very voice of infinite law resolving within itself all discords.

And all--all--passionless, yet--rapturous.
"Out of the Thing that held me, out from its fires pulsed vitality--a flood of inhuman energy in which I was bathed.

And it was as though this energy were--reassembling me, fitting me even closer to the elemental things, changing me fully into them.
"I felt the little tendrils touching, caressing--then came the shots.
Awakening was--dreadful, a struggling back from drowning.

I saw Martin--blasted.