His mind was still a surging perplexity. Clearly
he had slept. and had been removed in his sleep. But
here? And who were those people, the distant
crowd beyond the deep blue pillars? Boscastle? He
poured out and partially drank another glass of the
colourless fluid.

What was this place? -- this place that to his senses
seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive? He looked
about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment,
unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof
was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of
light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow
blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed.
"Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its
own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.

He would have called out, but only a little sound
came into his throat. Then he stood up, and, with
the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way
towards the archway. He staggered down the steps,
tripped on the corner of the black cloak he had
wrapped about himself, and saved himself by catching
at one of the blue pillars.

The passage ran down a cool vista of blue and purple,
and ended remotely in a railed space like a balcony,
brightly lit and projecting into a space of haze,
a space like the interior of some gigantic building.