It was the dragon finally who produced the necessary light. After
watching Richard with the anxious sympathy of one ineffectual for
another, it said: "Let me," and kindly breathed out a little flame,
which set the packet aflare for a moment.

The ashes fluttered down from Richard's hand among the beans, and a thin
violet stalk of smoke went up.

Sarah Brown smelt the unmistakable sour smell of magic, and saw
soundless words moving Richard's little khaki moustache. Then she found
that she had disappeared.

She had never done this before, she had always been present to disturb
and interrupt herself. She had never seen the world before, except
through the little glazed peepholes, called eyes, through which her
everyday self rather wistfully believed that it could see. Now, of
course, she knew what seeing was, and for the first time she was aware
of the real sizes of things. Poor man measures all things by the size of
his own foot. He looks complacently at the print of his boot in the mud,
and notices that the ant which he crushed was not nearly as big as his
foot, therefore the ant does not matter to him. He also notices that
those same feet of his would not be able to walk to the moon within a
reasonable time, therefore the moon does not matter to him.

But Sarah Brown had disappeared, and therefore could not measure
anything. The spider strode from hill to hill, with the wind rushing
through the hair on his back. The blue sky was just a lampshade, clipped
on to the earth to shield it from the glare of the gods, beyond it was a
mere roof of eternity, pricked with a few billion stars to keep it well
ventilated.