He sat, now fully awake, listening alertly, forgetting the viands in his attention.
Then with a shock he remembered that he was naked, and casting about him for covering, saw a long black robe thrown on one of the chairs beside him.

This he wrapped about him and sat down again, trembling.
His mind was still a surging perplexity.

Clearly he had slept, and had been removed in his sleep.

But where?
And who were those people, the distant crowd beyond the deep blue pillars?
Boscastle?
He poured out and partially drank another glass of the colourless fluid.
What was this place ?--this place that to his senses seemed subtly quivering like a thing alive?
He looked about him at the clean and beautiful form of the apartment, unstained by ornament, and saw that the roof was broken in one place by a circular shaft full of light, and, as he looked, a steady, sweeping shadow blotted it out and passed, and came again and passed.

"Beat, beat," that sweeping shadow had a note of its own in the subdued tumult that filled the air.
He would have called out, but only a little sound came into his throat.
Then he stood up, and, with the uncertain steps of a drunkard, made his way towards the archway.