So complete, moreover, was my inclusion in this sacramental attitude towards Nature, that I saw the particular purpose for which we three were here--as Julius saw it. I experienced a growing joy, an ever lessening alarm. Three human souls met here upon this island of a moment’s restitution, important certainly, yet after all an episode merely, set between a series of lives long past and of countless lives to follow after. The elements, and the Earth to which they were consciously related, the Universe of which, with ourselves, she formed an integral constituent--all were relatively and in their just proportions involved in this act of restitution. Hence, in a dim way, it was out of time and space. Our very acts and feelings were those of Nature and of that vaster Whole, wherein Nature, herself but a little item, lies secure. The Universe felt and acted with us. The gentian in the field would be aware, but Sirius, too. Three human specks would act out certain things, but the wind in the forest would co-operate and feel glad, and the fire in Orion’s nebula would be aware. An older form of consciousness was operative. We were not separate. Instead of _thinking_ as separate items apart from the rest of the cosmos, we _felt_ as integral bits of it--and here, perhaps, lay the essence of what I call another kind of consciousness than the one known to-day. CHAPTER XXVIII My mind retains with photographic accuracy the detail of that sinister yet gorgeous night. One thing alone vitiates the value of my report--while I remember what happened, I cannot remember _why_ it happened. At the actual time, I understood the meaning of every word and action because the power to do so was in me. I was in another state of consciousness. That state has passed, and with it the ability to interpret. I am in the position of a man who remembers clearly the detail of some dream to which, on waking, he has lost the key. While dreaming it, the meaning was daylight clear. The return to normal consciousness has left him with a photograph he no longer can explain. The first tentative approach, however, of those Intelligences men call Fire and Wind--their first contact with this other awakened Self in me, I remember perfectly. Wind came first, then Fire; yet at first it was merely that they made their presence known. I became aware of them. And the natural, simple way in which this came about I may describe to some extent perhaps.