“I can do but one thing more,” said he, “and that is--Love.” “I thought,” said I, “you could make communion with the Deity.” “And so I could,” he cried, angrily, “so I could; but I must first give my glass rod an infinite rotation; the number of vibrations in a second must be a number which is a multiple of _all_ other numbers, however great; for that even my great fly-wheel must have an infinite speed. Ah, your ‘loft with power’ does not give me that.... But it would be only an idea if I could do that too, nothing but a rhythmic motion in your brain.”... Then my faith rose well above this idle chatter. But I kept silence; for again my soul had passed out of the ken of this German doctor. Althea I saw; Althea in the dark room before me; Althea, and I had communion with her soul. Then I knew indeed that I did love her. The ecstasy of that moment knew no time; it may have been a minute or an hour, as we mortals measure it; it was but an eternity of bliss to me.... Then followed again faith and hope, and then I awoke and saw the room all radiant with the calm of that white light--the light that Dante saw so near to God. But it changed again to violet, like the glacier’s cave, blue like the heavens, yellow like the day; then faded through the scarlet into night. Again I was in a sea of thoughts and phantasies; the inspiration of a Shakespeare, the fancy of a Mozart or a Titian, the study of a Newton, all in turn were mine. And then my evil dreams began. Through lust to greed of power, then to avarice, hatred, envy, and revenge, my soul was driven like a leaf before the autumn wind. Then I rose and flew at his throat once more. “Thou liest!” I cried. “Heed not the rabble’s cry--God lies NOT in a rotting egg!” I remember no more. * * * * * When I regained consciousness it was a winter twilight, and the room was cold. I was alone in the doctor’s study and the machinery in the house was stilled.... I went to the eastern window and saw that the twilight was not the twilight of the dawn. I I must have slept all day.... As I turned back I saw a folded paper on the table, and read, in the doctor’s hand: “In six hours you have passed through all the thoughts, all the wills, and all the passions known to devils, men, or angels. You must now sleep deeply or you die. I have put the lever on the rhythm of the world, which is Sleep. “In twelve hours I shall stop it, and you will wake. “Then you had better go home and seek your finite sleep, or I have known men lose their mind.” * * * * * I staggered out into the street, and sought my room. My head was still dizzy, my brain felt tired, and my soul was sere. I felt like an old man; and yet my heart was still half-drunk with sleep, and enamoured with it, entranced with that profound slumber of the world to which all consciousness comes as a sorrow.