More than anything else it was like a dusty draught, sunbeam-lit.  Broader and wider and deeper grew the starless space, the vacant Beyond, into which I was being drawn.  At last a quarter of the heavens was black and blank, and the whole headlong rush of stellar universe closed in behind me like a veil of light that is gathered together.  It drove away from me like a monstrous jack-o’-lantern driven by the wind.  I had come out into the wilderness of space.  Ever the vacant blackness grew broader, until the hosts of the stars seemed only like a swarm of fiery specks hurrying away from me, inconceivably remote, and the darkness, the nothingness and emptiness, was about me on every side.  Soon the little universe of matter, the cage of points in which I had begun to be, was dwindling, now to a whirling disc of luminous glittering, and now to one minute disc of hazy light.  In a little while it would shrink to a point, and at last would vanish altogether.

Suddenly feeling came back to me—­feeling in the shape of overwhelming terror; such a dread of those dark vastitudes as no words can describe, a passionate resurgence of sympathy and social desire.  Were there other souls, invisible to me as I to them, about me in the blackness? or was I indeed, even as I felt, alone?  Had I passed out of being into something that was neither being nor not-being?  The covering of the body, the covering of matter, had been torn from me, and the hallucinations of companionship and security.  Everything was black and silent.  I had ceased to be.  I was nothing.  There was nothing, save only that infinitesimal dot of light that dwindled in the gulf.  I strained myself to hear and see, and for a while there was naught but infinite silence, intolerable darkness, horror, and despair.

Then I saw that about the spot of light into which the whole world of matter had shrunk there was a faint glow.  And in a band on either side of that the darkness was not absolute.  I watched it for ages, as it seemed to me, and through the long waiting the haze grew imperceptibly more distinct.  And then about the band appeared an irregular cloud of the faintest, palest brown.  I felt a passionate impatience; but the things grew brighter so slowly that they scarce seemed to change.  What was unfolding itself?  What was this strange reddish dawn in the interminable night of space?

The cloud’s shape was grotesque.  It seemed to be looped along its lower side into four projecting masses, and, above, it ended in a straight line.  What phantom was it?  I felt assured I had seen that figure before; but I could not think what, nor where, nor when it was.  Then the realisation rushed upon me. It was a clenched Hand. I was alone in space, alone with this huge, shadowy Hand, upon which the whole Universe of Matter lay like an unconsidered speck of dust.  It seemed as though I watched it through vast periods of time.  On the forefinger glittered a ring; and the universe