transverse passage. This passage ran between polished
pillars of some white-veined substance of deep ultramarine, and along it
came the sound of human movements, and voices and a deep undeviating
droning note. He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the
viands in his attention.

Then with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about him
for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside
him. This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.

His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly he had slept, and had
been removed in his sleep. But where? And who were those people, the
distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He poured out and
partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.

What was this place?--this place that to his senses seemed subtly
quivering like a thing alive? He looked about him at the clean and
beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that the
roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as
he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and came
again and passed. "Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.

He would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat.
Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his
way towards the archway. He staggered down the steps, tripped on the
corner of the black cloak he had wrapped about himself, and saved himself
by catching at one of the blue pillars.

The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple and ended remotely
in a railed space like a balcony brightly lit and projecting into a space
of haze, a space like the interior of some gigantic building. Beyond and
remote were vast and vague architectural forms. The tumult of voices rose
now loud and clear, and on the balcony and with their backs to him,
gesticulating and apparently in animated conversation, were three
figures, richly dressed in loose and easy garments of bright soft
colourings. The noise of a great multitude of people poured up over the
balcony, and once it seemed the top of a banner passed, and once some
brightly coloured object, a pale blue cap or garment thrown up into the
air perhaps, flashed athwart the space and fell. The shouts sounded like
English, there was a reiteration of "Wake!" He heard some indistinct
shrill cry, and abruptly these three men