He had the sensation, as he came down the slope, of having left behind, on the top of Babylon Hill, some actual physical body⁠—a body that had been troubling him, like a great repulsive protuberance, both by its appearance and by its weight. He felt lighter, freer, liberated from the malice of matter. Above all he felt once more that his inmost identity was a hard, round, opaque crystal, which had the power of forcing itself through any substance, organic, inorganic, magnetic, or psychic, that might obstruct its way.

There were a few lights twinkling still among the Blacksod roofs. But he had no notion whether Christie’s was among them; and at this moment it seemed unimportant. A new fragrance filled the air as he descended; which he defined to himself as the actual smell of Somersetshire, as distinct from the smell of Dorsetshire⁠—the far-off fragrance, in fact, full of the exhalations of brackish mosses, amber-coloured peat-tussocks, and arrow-pointed water-plants, of the salt-marshes of Sedgemoor.