he results of the
week's experiments--that they were, in fact, precisely the results he
had expected. "I'll speak to you about it later, Perrie," he told her
gently. "Dexter ... what experiences have you had?"

Dexter Jones cleared his throat. He was a serious young man who
appeared at meetings conservatively and neatly dressed and shaved to
the quick, and rarely spoke unless spoken to.

"Well, nothing very dramatic, Dr. Al," he said diffidently. "I did
have a few nightmares during the week. But I'm not sure there's any
connection between them and, uh, what you were having us do."

Dr. Ormond stroked his chin and regarded Dexter with benevolence. "A
connection seems quite possible, Dexter. Let's assume it exists. What
can you tell us about those nightmares?"

Dexter said he was afraid he couldn't actually tell them anything. By
the time he was fully awake he'd had only a very vague impression of
what the nightmares were about, and the only part he could remember
clearly now was that they had been quite alarming.

Old Mrs. Folsom, who was more than a little jealous of the special
attention enjoyed by Dexter and Perrie, broke in eagerly at that point
to tell about a nightmare _she'd_ had during the week and which _she_
could remember fully; and Cavender's attention drifted away from the
talk. Mrs. Folsom was an old bore at best, but a very wealthy old
bore, which was why Dr. Ormond usually let her ramble on a while
before steering the conversation back to the business of the meeting.
But Cavender didn't have to pretend to listen.

From his vantage point behind most of the group, he let his gaze and
thoughts wander from one to the other of them again. For the majority
of the advanced students, he reflected, the Institute of Insight
wasn't really too healthy a place. But it offered compensations.
Middle-aged or past it on the average, financially secure, vaguely
disappointed in life, they'd found in Dr. Al a friendly and eloquent
guide to lead them into the fascinating worlds of their own minds. And
Dr. Al was good at it. He had borrowed as heavily from yoga and
western mysticism as from various orthodox and unorthodox
psychological disciplines, and composed his own system, almost his own
cosmology. His exercises would have made conservative psychiatrists
shudder, but he was clever enough to avoid getting his flock into too
serious mental difficulties. If some of them suffered a bit now and
then, it made the quest of