the way was
perceptible to his inner feelings. The staircase was cold, dismal, and
deserted, but it seemed to him, in his exaltation of soul, like a ladder
to heaven.

After he had mounted a dozen steps or so, he paused to take breath. Each
step was increasingly difficult to ascend; he felt as though he were
carrying a heavy man on his shoulders. It struck a familiar chord in his
mind. He went on and, ten stairs higher up, came to a window set in a
high embrasure.

On to this he clambered, and looked through. The window was of a sort of
glass, but he could see nothing. Coming to him, however, from the world
outside, a disturbance of the atmosphere struck his senses, causing his
blood to run cold. At one moment it resembled a low, mocking, vulgar
laugh, travelling from the ends of the earth; at the next it was like
a rhythmical vibration of the air--the silent, continuous throbbing of
some mighty engine. The two sensations were identical, yet different.
They seemed to be related in the same manner as soul and body. After
feeling them for a long time, Nightspore got down from the embrasure,
and continued his ascent, having meanwhile grown very serious.

The climbing became still more laborious, and he was forced to stop at
every third or fourth step, to rest his muscles and regain breath. When
he had mounted another twenty stairs in this way, he came to a second
window. Again he saw nothing. The laughing disturbance of the air,
too, had ceased; but the atmospheric throb was now twice as distinct
as before, and its rhythm had become double. There were two separate
pulses; one was in the time of a march, the other in the time of a
waltz. The first was bitter and petrifying to feel, but the second was
gay, enervating, and horrible.

Nightspore spent little time at that window, for he felt that he was
on the eve of a great discovery, and that something far more important
awaited him higher up. He proceeded aloft. The ascent grew more and
more exhausting, so much so that he had frequently to sit down, utterly
crushed by his own dead weight. Still, he got to the third window.

He climbed into the embrasure. His feelings translated themselves into
vision, and he saw a sight that caused him to turn pale. A gigantic,
self-luminous sphere was hanging in the sky, occupying nearly the whole
of it. This sphere was composed entirely of two kinds of active beings.
There were a myriad of tiny green corpuscles, varying in size from