He
looked at Mrs. Stapleton. She too bore the same expression of intent
regarding thought on her usually rather tiresome face.
Then once again the silence began to come down, like a long, noiseless
hush.
This time, however, his progress was swifter and more sure. He passed
with the speed of thought through those processes that had been
measurable before, faintly conscious of the words spoken before the
sitting began--
"... If possible, the silence of thought."
He thought he understood now what this signified, and that he was
experiencing it. No longer did he dwell upon, or consider, with any
voluntary activity, the images that passed before him. Rather they
moved past him while he simply regarded them without understanding.
His perception ran swiftly outwards, as through concentric circles,
yet he was not sure whether it were outwards or inwards that he went.
The roar of London, with its flight of ocular visions, sank behind
him, and without any further sense of mental travel, he found himself
perceiving his own home, whether in memory, imagination, or fact he
did not know. But he perceived his mother, in the familiar lamp-lit
room, over her needlework, and Maggie--Maggie looking at him with a
strange, almost terrified expression in her great eyes.
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