Or,—was it the sudden infusion of another element, of another force, of another individuality superior to the little learning and the little arts of both the modern mystic and the modern scientist?
For, at that instant, in a flash of time, occurred a curious thing.
The echoes of the Mystic’s wail were still resounding among the jars and jugs when Mr. Vanderhook might have been seen to stagger, to relax, to waver as he stood, to reach blindly for a chair, and then, to crumple up and drop gently upon the floor, to close his eyes, to sleep.
And Imogene, who sat upon the cask of copper wire, whose interest had not flagged for an instant, now changed expression suddenly. She yawned, leaned backward to the wall for support, dropped her pretty head to one side, closed her tearful eyes, and she, too, slept.
INTERLUDE.
And then unsensed by the sleepers, but clear to the vision of the miserable Mystic a sudden, luminous cloud appeared, grew and gathered in intensity. It appeared a few feet from the floor, close to the dynamo, within the radius of its attraction.
Steadily the brightness increased until the electric lights were as candles burning at noonday.
From the midst of this increasing splendor was gradually shaped a majestic figure, the face and form of an unearthly being, a man, yet a man so transcendent in presence, so lofty in pose, so dazzling in vestments, so celestial in expression as to separate him—almost wholly—from the little beings who run to and fro upon the earth, calling themselves men.