The Frenchman, staring, hardly breathed.

Rigid he sat and pale, with sweat now slowly guttering down his face, his jaws clamped hard and white.
"If the true nature of the universe could suddenly be revealed to our senses," went on the Master, now hardly more than a dull blur, "we could not survive.

The crash of cosmic sound, the blaze of strange lights, the hurricane forces of tempestuous energies sweeping space would blind, deafen, shrivel, annihilate us like so many flies swept into a furnace.

Nature has been kind; she has surrounded us with natural ray-filters of protection." His voice now seemed issuing from a kind of vacancy.

Save for a slight darkening of the air, nothing was visible of him.