or I must
have recourse to the last resource of civilization." Then, addressing
me in a louder tone, he hurriedly exclaimed, "Listen: no stranger must
witness what you have witnessed. Send your Wife back at once, before
she enters the apartment. The Gospel of Three Dimensions must not be
thus frustrated. Not thus must the fruits of one thousand years of
waiting be thrown away. I hear her coming. Back! back! Away from me,
or you must go with me--whither you know not--into the Land of Three
Dimensions!"

"Fool! Madman! Irregular!" I exclaimed; "never will I release thee;
thou shalt pay the penalty of thine impostures."

"Ha! Is it come to this?" thundered the Stranger: "then meet your
fate: out of your Plane you go. Once, twice, thrice! 'Tis done!"

Section 18. How I came to Spaceland, and what I saw there

An unspeakable horror seized me. There was a darkness; then a dizzy,
sickening sensation of sight that was not like seeing; I saw a Line
that was no Line; Space that was not Space: I was myself, and not
myself. When I could find voice, I shrieked aloud in agony, "Either
this is madness or it is Hell." "It is neither," calmly replied the
voice of the Sphere, "it is Knowledge; it is Three Dimensions: open
your eye once again and try to look steadily."

I looked, and, behold, a new world! There stood before me, visibly
incorporate, all that I had before inferred, conjectured, dreamed, of
perfect Circular beauty. What seemed the centre of the Stranger's form
lay open to my view: yet I could see no heart, nor lungs, nor
arteries, only a beautiful harmonious Something--for which I had no
words; but you, my Readers in Spaceland, would call it the surface of
the Sphere.

Prostrating myself mentally before my Guide, I cried, "How is it, O
divine ideal of consummate loveliness and wisdom that I see thy inside,
and yet cannot discern thy heart, thy lungs, thy arteries, thy liver?"
"What you think you see, you see not," he replied; "it is not given to
you, nor to any other Being to behold my internal parts. I am of a
different order of Beings from those in Flatland. Were I a Circle, you
could discern my intestines, but I am a Being, composed as I told you
before, of many Circles, the Many in the One, called in this country a
Sphere. And, just as the outside of a Cube is a Square, so the outside
of a Sphere presents the appearance of a Circle."

Bewildered though I was by my Teacher's enig