His head throbbed and pounded; his heart pumped madly; his eyes started from their sockets. Yet still he lay with outstretched arms, inhaling evenly and steadily.
Then everything within him seemed to warp and become distorted and askew. His veins tied themselves in knots. His blood choked and clogged. An awful weight crushed and crunched his breast.
But he set his teeth and clenched his fists, and continued to gulp in the murderous air.
Then he felt himself dropping, gently, gently—down, down, down—as though invisible hands were lowering him into some bottomless, pitch black cavern.
But suddenly there burst upon his vision a dazzling golden light, and far above him he saw a blazing throne, sparkling and flashing with a strange brilliancy, and on the throne a girl, her hair undone, her body clothed in a virginal robe. And she gazed down upon him with eyes full of sadness and reproach. And he tried to call out to her, and tried to lift his arms to her....
And the fiendish darkness swept all away and closed in upon him and crushed him, and he knew no more.
THIRD EPISODE.
EONS of time had passed.
All was impenetrable blackness. With incredible velocity, he was whizzing through infinite space. Nothing supported him; nothing touched him. Some unseen, unfelt, unthinkable Force was hurling him outward into a Stygian, unbounded void.
Then, so gradually that it was scarcely perceptible, the blackness was dyed a pallid, ghastly hue. And with a shocking suddenness it became alive with a horrible larvae. Bloodless and transparent things, they seemed, filling the air with a swarming, wriggling magnitude of loathsome life. And he was a part of this!