Do you not feel it thus, Macumazahn ?" Now that he mentioned it, certainly I did; indeed, I had felt it all along although amid the rush of sensations this one had scarcely disentangled itself in my mind.

I looked at the draped shape and saw--well, never mind whom I saw; it was not one only but several in sequence; also a woman who at that time I did not know although I came to know her afterwards, too well, perhaps, or at any rate quite enough to puzzle me.

The odd thing was that in this hallucination the personalities of these individuals seemed to overlap and merge, till at last I began to wonder whether they were not parts of the same entity or being, manifesting itself in sundry shapes, yet springing from one centre, as different coloured rays flow from the same crystal, while the beams from their source of light shift and change.

But the fancy is too metaphysical for my poor powers to express as clearly as I would.

Also no doubt it was but a hallucination that had its origin, perhaps, in the mischievous brain of her who sat before us.
At length she spoke and her voice sounded like silver bells heard over water in a great calm.