are the voids and waste places of the sky. Look, for instance, at
those pieces of darkness in the Milky Way,' he went on, pointing
with his finger to where the galaxy stretched across over their
heads with the luminousness of a frosted web. 'You see that dark
opening in it near the Swan? There is a still more remarkable one
south of the equator, called the Coal Sack, as a sort of nickname
that has a farcical force from its very inadequacy. In these our
sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. Those
are deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave
alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary
abysses to right and left as you pass on!'

Lady Constantine was heedful and silent.

He tried to give her yet another idea of the size of the universe;
never was there a more ardent endeavour to bring down the
immeasurable to human comprehension! By figures of speech and apt
comparisons he took her mind into leading-strings, compelling her to
follow him into wildernesses of which she had never in her life even
realized the existence.

'There is a size at which dignity begins,' he exclaimed; 'further on
there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size
at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness
begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. That size
faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not
right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers
to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain
their faculties to gain a new horror?'