If it had been Diana's intention--as it certainly was not--deliberately to inspire me with a sentiment of superstitious awe and expectation, by working upon an imagination always apt enough for the marvellous and recondite, she could not have chosen a more fitting time and means. The strange aspect of the lofty room, dimly illuminated below and shadowy overhead; the fantastic legends associated with it; the weird music that still trembled through it; and above all the spectacle of that potent instrument even now moving in harmony with the march of the universe;--these things alone might have stimulated the emotions of one of firmer nerves and sturdier health than mine. But, such as I then was, their influence upon me was profound and overmastering. The facts of my past life in the world, the little learning I had acquired--the material certainties, in short, whereby men are accustomed to steady themselves when assailed by aught that threatens to undermine the teachings of their experience--were become to me as nothing. Not what I had known and touched and could explain was true; but, rather, all that was inexplicable and supernatural. I was in love with mystery, and with Diana, and desired no better than to believe in them and do homage to them. As for Diana, familiar from childhood with the scene and the proceedings, her mood was of composed and deep-seated enjoyment; and she was doubtless far from suspecting my overstrained and almost hysteric plight: nay, I myself was as yet unaware of the degree of my prostration. I watched my cousin walking hither and thither, quietly and methodically completing I knew not what further preparations for the coming revelation, until, unable longer to endure inactive suspense, I asked whether the moment for looking through the telescope were yet arrived. 'There is only one thing more to do, but that is the most important of all,' was her answer. 'Sit in this chair, and you shall see.' She took hold of the lower end of the telescope, which was there about nine inches in diameter, removed the brass cover from it, and then, with a few light turns, unscrewed the ring that held the lens in place, and brought away the lens itself in her hands. I noticed that it was thicker through the centre than the generality of lenses, and that at one part of the rim there was a small projection, like the neck of a phial, giving the whole something of the appearance of a circular, flattened crystal flask. She was about to set it edgewise in a velvet-covered frame evidently made for the purpose, when, glancing at me, she seemed to alter her intention. 'You may hold it if you like, Cousin Will,' she said: 'but hold it fast, for it is more precious than adamant. There is none other like it in the world.' She put it in my hands. 'This is not a lens!' was my thought, as I felt its weight; 'it is hollow!'