Neville recounts the night of his awakening: he fell asleep normally and dreamed of a glorious city whose enormously wide sidewalks were filled with laughing boys and girls and set at intervals with concert grand pianos; he gave up his seat to a great artist whose music formed coloured geometrical patterns, arrested that imaginal activity within himself, and the frozen tone swelled into a sustained note that woke him not on his bed but inside his own skull, the holy sepulcher, from which he came out surrounded by the imagery of the birth of God.