XXXI
... taking form from nothing....
At first it could hardly be said to exist at all ... something more tenuous than a shadow ... as transparent as glass ... all the particulars of the chair visible through it—covering, head-rest, arms and back ... something formless, colorless ... a sort of pallid luminousness hazy in outline, changing in texture, suggesting the vague fluorescence in a Gessler tube....
Yet something, nevertheless, something more certainly real than the image I had seen shortly before—the image of myself refracted through the lens ... something material, tangible, ponderable ... as I could sense, as I could feel, as I knew with a conviction that excluded all doubt ... something living, perhaps!
Living, certainly! Yes, something alive; for now, inside the tissue, inside the substance of this luminous something, I thought I could see ... I could see ... I could see with absolute distinctness ... a sort of web, a veritable network of veins and nerves ... outlined in light ... in light brighter than the light of the thing itself ... and along those nerves and through those veins, rushing, streaming, leaping in regular pulsations, a phosphorescent liquid ... all coming from one center ... and that center ... a heart!
I could see ... but the testimony of my eyes was nothing ... my senses, my feelings, my very consciousness ... told me, convinced me, assured me, that that shadow was alive.... Of its life I had the same perception that I had of my own life. I could feel the beating of that heart, as I could feel the beating of my own heart; and I could feel, the streaming of that phosphorescent blood in those arteries of light as I could feel my own red blood in my own arteries of flesh.... Then at last I knew....
I knew that that Something, that that Presence, that that Being was taking form, not from nothing, but from me. Not only was it from me; it was my very very Self.
From the depths of my weakness and of my agony, from the abyss of mortal terror in which my consciousness and my intelligence had been engulfed, that one persuasion rose—a clear, clear comprehension of all that had been explained, suggested, threatened in words that had hitherto seemed so obscure to me....
Yes, that Shadow there was I, that Shadow sitting in the chair before me, that Shadow of pallid light that was already losing its transparency!
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