He was lying on a wooden couch, in a strangely decorated room, lighted by electricity. His hand was being squeezed, not by Tydomin, but by a man dressed in the garments of civilisation, with whose face he was certainly familiar, but under what circumstances he could not recall. Other people stood in the background - they too were vaguely known to him. He sat up and began to smile, without any especial reason; and then stood upright.
Everybody seemed to be watching him with anxiety and emotion - he wondered why. Yet he felt that they were all acquaintances. Two in particular he knew - the man at the farther end of the room, who paced restlessly backward and forward, his face transfigured by stern, holy grandeur; and that other big, bearded man - who was himself. Yes - he was looking at his own double. But it was just as if a crime-riddled man of middle age were suddenly confronted with his own photograph as an earnest, idealistic youth.
His other self spoke to him. He heard the sounds, but did not comprehend the sense. Then the door was abruptly flung open, and a short, brutish - looking individual leaped in. He began to behave in an extraordinary manner to everyone around him; and after that came straight up to him - Maskull. He spoke some words, but they were incomprehensible. A terrible expression came over the newcomer's face, and he grasped his neck with a pair of hairy hands. Maskull felt his bones bending and breaking, excruciating pains passed through all the nerves of his body, and he experienced a sense of impending death. He cried out, and sank helplessly on the floor, in a heap. The chamber and the company vanished - the light went out.