I WILL tell you, now of a strange dream which I dreamed, and of the stranger things to
which I awakened. Since, out of a blank--a void--this vision burst in upon my mind, I
cannot do better than relate it, without preamble. It was thus:
I dreamed that I lay writhing on the floor in agony indescribable. My veins were filled
with liquid fire, and but that stygian darkness was about me, I told myself that I must
have seen the smoke arising from my burning body.
This, I thought, was death.
Then, a cooling shower descended upon me, soaked through skin and tissue to the
tortured arteries and quenched the fire within. Panting, but free from pain, I lay--
exhausted.
Strength gradually returning to me, I tried to rise; but the carpet felt so singularly soft that
it offered me no foothold. I waded and plunged like a swimmer treading water; and all
about me rose impenetrable walls of darkness, darkness all but palpable. I wondered why
I could not see the windows. The horrible idea flashed to my mind that I was become
blind!
Somehow I got upon my feet, and stood swaying dizzily. I became aware of a heavy
perfume, and knew it for some kind of incense.
Then--a dim light was born, at an immeasurable distance away. It grew steadily in
brilliance. It spread like a bluish-red stain-- like a liquid. It lapped up the darkness and
spread throughout the room.
But this was not my room! Nor was it any room known to me.
It was an apartment of such size that its dimensions filled me with a kind of awe such as I
never had known: the awe of walled vastness. Its immense extent produced a sensation of
sound. Its hugeness had a distinct NOTE.
Tapestries covered the four walls. There was no door visible. These tapestries were
magnificently figured with golden dragons; and as the serpentine bodies gleamed and
shimmered in the increasing radiance, each dragon, I thought, intertwined its glittering
coils more closely with those of another. The carpet was of such richness that I stood
knee-deep in its pile. And this, too, was fashioned all over with golden dragons; and they
seemed to glide about amid the shadows of the design--stealthily.
At the farther end of the hall--for hall it was--a huge table with dragons' legs stood
solitary amid the luxuriance of the carpet. It bore scintillating globes, and tubes that held
living organisms, and books of a size and in such bindings as I never had imagined, with
