"You, Goodwin, place your arm over my shoulder." Wondering, I did as she bade; she pressed other fingers upon the shelf's indentations--three of the rings of vapour spun into intense light, raced around each other; from the screen behind us grew a radiance that held within itself all spectrums--not only those seen, but those _unseen_ by man's eyes.

It waxed brilliant and ever more brilliant, all suffusing, passing through me as day streams through a window pane! The enclosing facets burst into a blaze of coruscations, and in each sparkling panel I saw our images, shaken and torn like pennants in a whirlwind.

I turned to look--was stopped by the handmaiden's swift command: "Turn not--on your life!" The radiance behind me grew; was a rushing tempest of light in which I was but the shadow of a shadow.

I heard, but not with my ears--nay with _mind_ itself--a vast roaring; an _ordered_ tumult of sound that came hurling from the outposts of space; approaching--rushing--hurricane out of the heart of the cosmos--closer, closer.

It wrapped itself about us with unearthly mighty arms.
And brilliant, ever more brilliant, streamed the radiance through us.
The faceted walls dimmed; in front of me they melted, diaphanously, like a gelatinous wall in a blast of flame; through their vanishing, under the torrent of driving light, the unthinkable, impalpable tornado, I began to move, slowly--then ever more swiftly! Still the roaring grew; the radiance streamed--ever faster we went.
Cutting down through the length, the _extension_ of me, dropped a wall of rock, foreshortened, clenched close; I caught a glimpse of the elfin gardens; they whirled, contracted, into a thin--slice--of colour that was a part of me; another wall of rock shrinking into a thin wedge through which I flew, and that at once took its place within me like a card slipped beside those others! Flashing around me, and from Lakla and O'Keefe, were nimbuses of flickering scarlet flames.