ned. Since, out of a blank--a
void--this vision burst in upon my mind, I cannot do better than relate
it, without preamble. It was thus:

I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My
veins were filled with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was
about me, I told myself that I must have seen the smoke arising from my
burning body.

This, I thought, was death.

Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and
tissue to the tortured arteries and quenched the fire within. Panting,
but free from pain, I lay--exhausted.

Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet
felt so singularly soft that it offered me no foothold. I waded and
plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all about me rose
impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered
why I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to my mind
that I was become blind!

Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware
of a heavy perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.

Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew
steadily in brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain--like a
liquid. It lapped up the darkness and spread throughout the room.

But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.

It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a
kind of awe such as I never had known: the awe of walled vastness.
Its immense extent produced a sensation of sound. Its hugeness had a
distinct NOTE.

Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These
tapestries were magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the
serpentine bodies gleamed and shimmered in the increasing radiance,
each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering coils more closely
with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood
knee-deep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with
golden dragons; and they seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the
design--stealthily.

At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table with
dragons' legs stood solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet. It
bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held living organisms, and
books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
instruments of a type unknown to Western science--a heterogeneous
litter quite indescribable, which overflowed o