Two-tenths of a second is an extremely brief span of time, roughly matching the duration of a single human eye-blink. The average blink lasts between 0.1 and 0.4 seconds, and the process itself unfolds in three phases: the eyelid closing, a brief pause, and the eyelid opening. In the context of the narrative, this underscores the sheer instantaneousness of the event: the hero barely has time to notice the «gates glittering with gold and diamonds» before the situation shifts again.
Interestingly, a person blinks on average 15 to 20 times a minute — roughly once every 3 to 4 seconds. During a blink, the brain keeps processing information and building a continuous picture of what’s happening, which is why we don’t notice these brief «blind spots» in our perception. The hero, however, in the moment of his passage through space, finds himself in a state of heightened sensitivity that lets him register even such fleeting details.