Darkness?
What had I to do with darkness?
I knew not the word--I was only conscious of light--light exquisitely pure and brilliant--light through which I stepped as easily as a bird flies in air.

Perfectly awake to my sensations, I felt somehow that there was nothing remarkable in them--I seemed to be at home in some familiar element.

Delicate hands held mine--a face far lovelier than the loveliest face of woman ever dreamed by poet or painter, smiled radiantly at me, and I smiled back again.

A voice whispered in strange musical murmurs, such as I well seemed to know and comprehend: "Gaze behind thee ere the picture fades." I obeyed, half reluctantly, and saw as a passing shadow in a glass, or a sort of blurred miniature painting, the room where Heliobas stood, watching some strange imperfect shape, which I seemed faintly to recognise.

It looked like a small cast in clay, very badly executed, of the shape I at present wore; but it was incomplete, as though the sculptor had given it up as a failure and gone away, leaving it unfinished.
"Did I dwell in that body ?" I mused to myself, as I felt the perfection of my then state of being.