“Well,” he said, “there were the usual people there, and there was some music:  some violin and piano playing, to which I didn’t listen.  After that a man sang some Greek songs, and a curious thing happened to me.  When it began I felt my head swimming, and then I entirely lost account of my surroundings.  I forgot the party, the drawing-room and the people, and I seemed to be sitting on the rocks of a cliff near a small bay; in front of me was the sea:  it was a kind of blue green, but far more blue or at least of quite a different kind of blue than any I have seen.  It was transparent, and the sky above it was like a turquoise.  Behind me the cliff merged into a hill which was covered with red and white flowers, as bright as a Persian carpet.  On the beach in front, a tall man was standing, wading in the water, little bright waves sparkling round his feet.  He was tall and dark, and he was spearing a lot of little silver fish which were lying on the sand with a small wooden trident; and somewhere behind me a voice was singing.  I could not see where it came from, but it was wonderfully soft and delicious, and a lot of wild bees came swarming over the flowers, and a green lizard came right up close to me, and the air was burning hot, and there was a smell of thyme and mint in it.  And then the song stopped, and I came to myself, and I was back again in the drawing-room.  Then when the man began to sing again, I again lost consciousness, and I seemed to be in a dark orchard on a breathless summer night.  And somewhere near me there was a low white house with an opening which might have been a window, shrouded by creepers and growing things.  And in it there was a faint light.  And from the house came the sound of a sad love-song; and although I had never heard the song before I understood it, and it was about the moon and the Pleiads having set, and the hour passing, and the voice sang, ‘But I sleep alone!’ And this was repeated over and over again, and it was the saddest and most beautiful thing I had ever heard.  And again it stopped, and I was back again in the drawing-room.  Then when the singer began his third song I felt cold all over, and at the same time half suffocated, as people say they feel when they are nearly drowning.  I realised that I was in a huge, dark, empty space, and round me and far off in front of me were vague shadowy forms; and in the distance there was something which looked like two tall thrones, pillared and dim.  And on one of the thrones there was the dark form of a man, and on the other a woman like a queen, pale as marble, and unreal as a ghost, with great grey eyes that shone like moons.  In front of them was another form, and he was singing a song, and the song was so sad and so beautiful that tears rolled down the shadowy cheeks of the ghosts in front of me.  And all at once the singer gave a great cry of joy, and something white and blinding flashed past me and disappeared, and he with it.  But I remained in the same place with the dark ghosts far off in front of me.  And I seemed to be there an eternity till I heard a cry of desperate pain and anguish, and the white form flashed past me once more, and vanished, and with it the whole thing, and I was back again in the drawing-room, and I felt faint and giddy, and could not stay there any longer.”