In short, I knew that here was nothing real, nothing that had ever been nor could ever be.

I knew that it was nothing else than a ridiculous orgy of the imagination, such as men enjoy in drug dreams, in delirium, or in mere ordinary slumber.
And then, as all went merry and well with me on my celestial quest, the tip of my wand missed a star, and on the instant I knew I had been guilty of a great crime.

And on the instant a knock, vast and compulsive, inexorable and mandatory as the stamp of the iron hoof of doom, smote me and reverberated across the universe.

The whole sidereal system coruscated, reeled and fell in flame.
I was torn by an exquisite and disruptive agony.

And on the instant I was Darrell Standing, the life-convict, lying in his strait-jacket in solitary.