It seemed that everything was in abeyance in myself, except the central fact that this experience was true. The rest of existence fell away, clipped off as by a pair of mighty shears. Both fire and wind seemed actively about me; yet not unnaturally. There was this heat and lift, but there was nothing frantic. The native forces in me were raised to their ultimate capacity, though never for a moment beyond the limit that high emotion might achieve. Nature accomplished the abnormal, possibly, but still according to law and what was--or had been once--comprehensible. The passes grew slower, with longer intervals between; Mrs. LeVallon lay motionless, the lips slightly parted, the skin preternaturally pale, the eyelids tightly closed. “Hush!” whispered Julius, as I made an involuntary movement, “it is still the normal sleep, and she may easily awake. Let no sound disturb her. It must go gradually.” He spoke without once removing his gaze from her face. “Be ready to write what you hear,” he added, “and help by ‘thinking’ fire and wind--in my direction.” A long-drawn sigh was audible, accompanied by the slightest possible convulsive movement of the reclining body. “She sinks deeper,” he whispered, ceasing the passes for a moment. “The consciousness is already below the deep-dream stage. Soon she will wake into the interior lucidity when her Self of To-day will touch the parent source behind. _They_ are already with her: they light--and lift--her soul. She will remember all her past, and will direct us.” I made no answer; I asked no questions; I stood and watched, willingly sympathetic, yet incapable of action. The curious scene held something of tragedy and grandeur. There was triumph in it. The sense of Nature working with us increased, yet we ourselves comparatively unimportant. The earth, the sky, the universe took part and were involved in our act of restitution. It was beyond all experience. It was also--at times--intolerable. The body settled deeper into the chair; the crackling of the wicker making sharp reports in the stillness. The pallor of the face increased; the cheeks sank in, the framework of the eyes stood out; imperceptibly the features began to re-arrange themselves upon another, greater scale, most visible, perhaps, in the strong, delicate contours of the mouth and jaw. Upon Julius, too, as he stood beside her, came down some indefinable change that set him elsewhere and otherwise. His dignity, his deep solicitous tenderness, and at the same time a hint of power that emanated more and more from his whole person, rendered him in some intangible fashion remote and inaccessible. I watched him with growing wonder.