THE TRANCE The state of cataleptic rigour into which this man had fallen, lasted for an unprecedented length of time, and then he passed slowly to the flaccid state, to a lax attitude suggestive of profound repose.

Then it was his eyes could be closed.
He was removed from the hotel to the Boscastle surgery, and from the surgery, after some weeks, to London.

But he still resisted every attempt at reanimation.

After a time, for reasons that will appear later, these attempts were discontinued.

For a great space he lay in that strange condition, inert and still--neither dead nor living but, as it were, suspended, hanging midway between nothingness and existence.