Algernon Blackwood

“ Passing that grotesque erection opposite the Albert Hall, gaudy in the last touch of sunset, I saw him shudder. The spell of the ship and sea and the blazing Sicilian sunshine lay still upon us, Etna's cones towering beyond those gilded spikes of the tawdry Memorial. I stole a glance at my companion. His light blue eyes shone, but with the reflection of another sunset--the sunset of forgotten, ancient, far-off scenes when the world was young. ”

“ A Life Insurance Office! All London paying yearly sums to protect themselves against--against the most interesting moment of life. Premiums upon escape and freedom!
Again, it was the spell of my companion's personality that turned all this paraphernalia of the busy, modern existence into the counters in some grotesque and rather sordid game. Tomorrow, of course, it would all turn real and earnest again, O'Malley's story a mere poetic fancy. ”

“ The power of the greatest fairy tale this world can ever know lay about me, raised to its highest expression. I caught at least some touch of reality--of awful reality--in the idea that this splendid globe whereon we perched like insects peeping timidly from tiny cells, might be the body of a glorious Being--the mighty frame to which some immense Collective Consciousness, vaster than that of men, and wholly different in kind, might be attached.
In the story, as I found it later in the dusty little Paddington room, O'Malley reported, somewhat heavily, it seemed to me, the excerpts chosen by Dr. ”