Suddenly, as in a flash, the whole of his past life unrolled itself before his consciousness.  He saw himself a toddling baby, a growing child, a schoolboy, a happy young rascal chasing sheep; then came a period of pain, a gradual convalescence, a joyful life in the country air, a life of reading, a life of pleasant dreams, a life into which entered his friendship with St Aubyn, his days with Lubin in the garden, his encounters with Mr Buskin, and those strange experiences that had reached him from another world.  That other world was coming very near to him now, and he was coming very near to it!  And all these recollections formed one marvellous panorama, one great simultaneous whole, with no appearance of succession, but just as though it had happened all at once.  Austin seemed to be past reasoning; he had advanced to a stage where thinking and speculating were things gone by for ever, and his perceptions were wholly passive.  There was his life, spread out in consciousness before him; and meanwhile he was undergoing a change.

He looked up, and saw a dim, violet cloud hanging horizontally over him.  It was in shape like a human form; his own form.  At that moment a great tremor, a sort of convulsive thrill, passed through him as he lay, jarring every nerve, and awaking him, at that supreme crisis, to the existence of his body.  A sense of confusion followed; and then he seemed to pass out of his own head, and found himself poised in the air immediately over the place where he had just been lying.  He saw the violet cloud no more, though whether he had coalesced with it, or the cloud itself had become disintegrated, he could not tell; then, by a sort of instinct, he assumed an erect position, and saw that he was balanced, somehow, a little distance from the bed, looking down upon it.  And on the bed, connected with him by a faintly luminous cord, lay the white, still, beautiful form of a dead boy.  “And that was my body!” he cried, in awestruck wonder, though his words caused no vibration in the air.

He looked at himself, and saw that he was glorious, encircled by a radiant fire-mist.  And he was throbbing and pulsating with life, able to move hither and thither without effort, free from lameness, free from weight, strong, vigorous, full of energy, poised like a bird in the pure air of heaven, ready to take his flight in any conceivable direction at the faintest motion of his own will.  Then the resplendence that enveloped him extended, until the whole room was full of it; and in the midst of it there stood a very sweet and gracious figure, robed in white drapery, and with eyes of intensest love, more beautiful to look at than anything that Austin had ever dreamed of.  “Mother!” he whispered, as he glided swiftly towards her.