I did not move.  I felt distinctly frightened; but could think of nothing better to do than wait.  For perhaps a minute, I kept my glance about the room, nervously.  Then I noticed that the lights had commenced to sink, very slowly; until presently they showed minute specks of red fire, like the gleamings of rubies in the darkness.  Still, I sat watching; while a sort of dreamy indifference seemed to steal over me; banishing altogether the fear that had begun to grip me.

Away in the far end of the huge old-fashioned room, I became conscious of a faint glow.  Steadily it grew, filling the room with gleams of quivering green light; then they sank quickly, and changed—­even as the candle flames had done—­into a deep, somber crimson that strengthened, and lit up the room with a flood of awful glory.

The light came from the end wall, and grew ever brighter until its intolerable glare caused my eyes acute pain, and involuntarily I closed them.  It may have been a few seconds before I was able to open them.  The first thing I noticed was that the light had decreased, greatly; so that it no longer tried my eyes.  Then, as it grew still duller, I was aware, all at once, that, instead of looking at the redness, I was staring through it, and through the wall beyond.

Gradually, as I became more accustomed to the idea, I realized that I was looking out on to a vast plain, lit with the same gloomy twilight that pervaded the room.  The immensity of this plain scarcely can be conceived.  In no part could I perceive its confines.  It seemed to broaden and spread out, so that the eye failed to perceive any limitations.  Slowly, the details of the nearer portions began to grow clear; then, in a moment almost, the light died away, and the vision—­if vision it were—­faded and was gone.

Suddenly, I became conscious that I was no longer in the chair.  Instead, I seemed to be hovering above it, and looking down at a dim something, huddled and silent.  In a little while, a cold blast struck me, and I was outside in the night, floating, like a bubble, up through the darkness.  As I moved, an icy coldness seemed to enfold me, so that I shivered.

After a time, I looked to right and left, and saw the intolerable blackness of the night, pierced by remote gleams of fire.  Onward, outward, I drove.  Once, I glanced behind, and saw the earth, a small crescent of blue light, receding away to my left.  Further off, the sun, a splash of white flame, burned vividly against the dark.

An indefinite period passed.  Then, for the last time, I saw the earth—­an enduring globule of radiant blue, swimming in an eternity of ether.  And there I, a fragile flake of soul dust, flickered silently across the void, from the distant blue, into the expanse of the unknown.