We painted and read together, or I listened to the wild improvisations of his speaking guitar. His paintings grew touch by touch into vaguenesses at which I shuddered the more thrillingly because I shuddered knowing not why. One of them was an interior of a rectangular vault, very long, with low walls, smooth and white, and no torch or other artificial source of light was discernible; yet a flood of intense rays rolled throughout and bathed the whole in a ghastly splendour. Among the dirges he sang was one whose words I have borne in mind. It told of a radiant palace where a monarch reigned in wisdom, and of evil things in robes of sorrow that assailed the monarch's high estate, so that travellers now see vast forms that move fantastically to a discordant melody, and a hideous throng rush out for ever and laugh but smile no more.