rein? Ah, no! Let us rather resolve that
our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to
our intellectual onset, the gates of the Sixth Dimension shall fly
open; after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth-- How long I should have
continued I know not. In vain did the Sphere, in his voice of thunder,
reiterate his command of silence, and threaten me with the direst
penalties if I persisted. Nothing could stem the flood of my ecstatic
aspirations. Perhaps I was to blame; but indeed I was intoxicated with
the recent draughts of Truth to which he himself had introduced me.
However, the end was not long in coming. My words were cut short by a
crash outside, and a simultaneous crash inside me, which impelled me
through space with a velocity that precluded speech. Down! down! down!
I was rapidly descending; and I knew that return to Flatland was my
doom. One glimpse, one last and never-to-be-forgotten glimpse I had of
that dull level wilderness--which was now to become my Universe
again--spread out before my eye. Then a darkness. Then a final,
all-consummating thunder-peal; and, when I came to myself, I was once
more a common creeping Square, in my Study at home, listening to the
Peace-Cry of my approaching Wife.

Section 20. How the Sphere encouraged me in a Vision

Although I had less than a minute for reflection, I felt, by a kind of
instinct, that I must conceal my experiences from my Wife. Not that I
apprehended, at the moment, any danger from her divulging my secret,
but I knew that to any Woman in Flatland the narrative of my adventures
must needs be unintelligible. So I endeavoured to reassure her by some
story, invented for the occasion, that I had accidentally fallen
through the trap-door of the cellar, and had there lain stunned.

The Southward attraction in our country is so slight that even to a
Woman my tale necessarily appeared extraordinary and well-nigh
incredible; but my Wife, whose good sense far exceeds that of the
average of her Sex, and who perceived that I was unusually excited, did
not argue with me on the subject, but insisted that I was ill and
required repose. I was glad of an excuse for retiring to my chamber to
think quietly over what had happened. When I was at last by myself, a
drowsy sensation fell on me; but before my eyes closed I endeavoured to
reproduce the Third Dimension, and especially the process by which a
Cube is constructed through the mot