He only knew that back there in that blank daze of suspended time, before he grew to recognize the whiteness of the hospital walls and the rattle of the nurse’s starched skirt along the corridor, there was a long period when he was shut in with four high walls of smoke.  Smoke that reached to heaven, roofing him away from it, and had its foundations down in the burning fiery pit of hell where he could hear lost souls struggling with smothered cries for help.  Smoke that filled his throat, eyes, brain, soul.  Terrible, enfolding, imprisoning smoke; thick, yellow, gray, menacing!  Smoke that shut his soul away from all the universe, as if he had been suddenly blotted out, and made him feel how stark alone he had been born, and always would be evermore.

He seemed to have lain within those slowly approaching walls of smoke a century or two ere he became aware that he was not alone, after all.  There was a Presence there beside him.  Light, and a Presence!  Blinding light.  He reasoned that other men, the men outside of the walls of smoke, the firemen perhaps, and by-standers, might think that light came from the fire down in the pit, but he knew it did not.  It radiated from the Presence beside him.  And there was a Voice, calling his name.  He seemed to have heard the call years back in his life somewhere.  There was something about it, too, that made his heart leap in answer, and brought that strange thrill he used to have as a boy in prep. school, when his captain called him into the game, though he was only a substitute.

He could not look up, yet he could see the face of the Presence now.  What was there so strangely familiar, as if he had been looking upon that face but a few moments before?  He knew.  It was that brave spirit come back from the pit.  Come, perhaps, to lead him out of this daze of smoke and darkness.  He spoke, and his own voice sounded glad and ringing: 

“I know you now.  You are Stephen Marshall.  You were in college.  You were down there in the theater just now, saving men.”

“Yes, I was in college,” the Voice spoke, “and I was down there just now, saving men.  But I am not Stephen Marshall.  Look again.”

And suddenly he understood.

“Then you are Stephen Marshall’s Christ!  The Christ he spoke of in the class that day!”

“Yes, I am Stephen Marshall’s Christ.  He let me live in Him.  I am the Christ you sneered at and disbelieved!”

He looked and his heart was stricken with shame.

“I did not understand.  It was against reason.  But had not seen you then.”

“And now?”

“Now?  What do you want of me?”

“You shall be shown.”

The smoke ebbed low and swung away his consciousness, and even the place grew dim about him, but the Presence was there.  Always through suspended space as he was borne along, and after, when the smoke gave way, and air, blessed air, was wafted in, there was the Presence.  If it had not been for that he could not have borne the awfulness of nothing that surrounded him.  Always there was the Presence!