in the air before me. I saw the sounds of the tinkling bell. And in
precisely the same way I heard the colours in the room, especially the
colours of those books in the shelf behind you. Those red bindings I
heard in deep sounds, and the yellow covers of the French bindings next
to them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike the chattering of
starlings. That brown bookcase muttered, and those green curtains
opposite kept up a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notes
of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these sounds when I looked
steadily at the different objects, and thought about them. The room, you
understand, was not full of a chorus of notes; but when I concentrated
my mind upon a colour, I heard, as well as saw, it."

"That is a known, though rarely obtained, effect of _Cannabis indica_,"
observed the doctor. "And it provoked laughter again, did it?"

"Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase made me laugh. It was so
like a great animal trying to get itself noticed, and made me think of a
performing bear--which is full of a kind of pathetic humour, you know.
But this mingling of the senses produced no confusion in my brain. On
the contrary, I was unusually clear-headed and experienced an
intensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously alive and
keen-minded.

"Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience to an impulse to
sketch--a talent not normally mine--I found that I could draw nothing
but heads, nothing, in fact, but one head--always the same--the head of
a dark-skinned woman, with huge and terrible features and a very
drooping left eye; and so well drawn, too, that I was amazed, as you may
imagine--"