pipe was empty. He repeated this until he had smoked a mace.

A vivacious and brilliant state of being flooded him; he felt capable
of profoundly witty conversation, and laughed at the solemn absurdities
of the Ammidons, at his father attempting to call down a blessing out
of the empty sky upon their food, at his sister's lugubrious
countenance, the childish emotions of Nettie. What a nonsensical
strutting business life was.

The confines of his room were lost in an amber radiance that filled all
space; it was at once a light and a perfume and charged with a sense of
impending rapture. A sparkling crimson shape floated down from infinite
skies--Taou Yuen. She wore a bridal costume, cunningly embroidered with
the phoenix, a hood of thin gold plate, and a band of red silk about her
brow bore the eight copper figures of the beings who are immortal. Her
hair was ornamented by the pure green jade pins of summer, her hanging
wrists were heavy with virgin silver, while her face was like the
desirous August moon flushed in low vapors.

He raised his bony arms--the wide silk sleeves falling back--his
emaciated yellow hands. From under his dark eyelids there was a glitter
of vision like the sheen on mica... Taou Yuen floated nearer.

Edward Dunsack woke suddenly, at the darkest ebb of night, and started
hurriedly to his feet. A sickening vertigo, a whirling head, sent him
lurching across the room. He came in contact with a chest of drawers, and
clung to it with the feeling that his legs were shriveling beneath him.
His consciousness slowly returned, and with it a pain like ruthless
tearing fingers searched his body. The rectangle of the open window,
only less dark than the room, promised a relief from the strangled effort