I
tell you. You can't sleep when you are in a state like that. And in my
trance, I could feel another arm grow out of my side here and grow
longer and longer, and grow out through the window although the window
was closed, and grow out across the street and down the street and right
through the walls and across the river.

"I had never known where Wolansky lived. But that night I knew. I had
never known the street or the house number. I had never been there in my
life. But I can tell you just exactly how his bedroom looked. The
wash-stand between the two windows, the work-table against the west
wall, the wardrobe, the old divan against the north wall. In a corner
the blue-gray tiled stove with some of the tile chipped off. And against
the south wall--the bed he lay in. I can tell you the color of the
blanket he pulled up over his face. It was a dirty brownish red.

"But my hand seemed to go through the blanket and grip Wolansky by the
throat. First he sighed and turned his head to one side and tried to
wriggle free. Then he raised his arms and tried to get hold of something
that wasn't there. His sighs turned into groans, and the groans changed
to a death rattle. He threw his arms and legs wildly around in the air,
his body bent up like a bow. But my hand held his head down against the
pillow. At last he quit struggling and dropped down limp on the bed.
Then the arm came crawling back in to my body, and I came out of the
trance--and went to sleep--or perhaps I fainted.

"The next morning the director came into our classroom and told us
Wolansky had died in the night of some sort of attack. You remember
that, I am sure----"

When Banaotovich began to tell me this story, he had looked away from
me, and his eyes never met mine during the telling. He had begun with a
painful effort, but as he went on he grew more and more excited and more
and more inflamed with hatred of the malicious old Greek teacher, till
it almost seemed as if he had forgotten me and was living the astounding
experience through for himself alone. When he was through, his ecstasy
of indignation left him and he sat dejected and apprehensive, studying
me pitifully out of the corners of his deep gray eyes.

* * * * *

When he stopped speaking, there was a moment of silence. Then I said
something. I think what I said was, "Very extraordinary!"

He smiled, a strained, sarcastic smile. "Extraordinary?" he repeated,
with