What _could_ be happening?
Austin, his mind now wide awake, and thoroughly on the alert, lay for some time in rapt enjoyment of this new experience.
Then he opened his eyes, and found that he was in bed after all; the nightlight was burning on a table by the window, the bookcase stood where it did, and he could even discern Lubin, who seemed to have dropped asleep, in an armchair three or four yards away.

That made the mystery all the greater, and Austin waited in expectant silence to see what would happen next.
Suddenly, as in a flash, the whole of his past life unrolled itself before his consciousness.

He saw himself a toddling baby, a growing child, a schoolboy, a happy young rascal chasing sheep; then came a period of pain, a gradual convalescence, a joyful life in the country air, a life of reading, a life of pleasant dreams, a life into which entered his friendship with St Aubyn, his days with Lubin in the garden, his encounters with Mr Buskin, and those strange experiences that had reached him from another world.

That other world was coming very near to him now, and he was coming very near to it! And all these recollections formed one marvellous panorama, one great simultaneous whole, with no appearance of succession, but just as though it had happened all at once.

Austin seemed to be past reasoning; he had advanced to a stage where thinking and speculating were things gone by for ever, and his perceptions were wholly passive.