At last he came to the end of the plain of mushrooms and reached the high green stalks he had been making for.  Beyond the dark clouds a silver glimmer had begun once more to show itself.  “I am just in time,” he said to himself, “the night is over, the sun is rising.”

At that moment there was a great whirr in the air, and from out of the green stalks rose a flight of millions and millions of enormous broad-winged butterflies of every hue and description—­silver, gold, purple, brown and blue.  Some with dark and velvety wings like the Purple Emperor, or the Red Admiral, others diaphanous and iridescent as dragon-flies.  Others again like vast soft and silvery moths.  They rose from every part of that green plain of stalks, they filled the sky, and then soared upwards and disappeared into the silvery cloudland.

Fletcher was about to leap forward when he heard a voice in his ear saying—­

“Are you 6493 Victoria?  You are talking to the Home Office.”

* * * * *

As soon as Fletcher heard the voice of the office messenger through the telephone he instantly realised his surroundings, and the strange experience he had just gone through, which had seemed so long and which in reality had been so brief, left little more impression on him than that which remains with a man who has been immersed in a brown study or who has been staring at something, say a poster in the street, and has not noticed the passage of time.

The next day he returned to his work at the office, and his fellow-clerks, during the whole of the next week, noticed that he was more zealous and more painstaking than ever.  On the other hand, his periodical fits of abstraction grew more frequent and more pronounced.  On one occasion he took a paper to the head of the department for signature, and after it had been signed, instead of removing it from the table, he remained staring in front of him, and it was not until the head of the department had called him three times loudly by name that he took any notice and regained possession of his faculties.  As these fits of absent-mindedness grew to be somewhat severely commented on, he consulted a doctor, who told him that what he needed was change of air, and advised him to spend his Sundays at Brighton or at some other bracing and exhilarating spot.  Fletcher did not take the doctor’s advice, but continued spending his spare time as he did before, that is to say, in going to some big junction and watching the express trains go by all day long.

One day while he was thus employed—­it was Sunday, in August of 19—­, when the Egyptian Exhibition was attracting great crowds of visitors—­and sitting, as was his habit, on a bench on the centre platform of Slough Station, he noticed an Indian pacing up and down the platform, who every now and then stopped and regarded him with peculiar interest, hesitating as though he wished to speak to him.  Presently the Indian came and sat down on the same bench, and after having sat there in silence for some minutes he at last made a remark about the heat.