“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: