a passionate acceptance of living. He watched these actions
in paralysed astonishment. Then once more he hurled himself against the
impassable barrier, and then with all that crew of mocking ghosts about
him, hurried back in dire confusion to Vincey to tell him of the outrage
that had come upon him.

But the brain of Vincey was now closed against apparitions, and the
disembodied Mr. Bessel pursued him in vain as he hurried out into
Holborn to call a cab. Foiled and terror-stricken, Mr. Bessel swept back
again, to find his desecrated body whooping in a glorious frenzy down
the Burlington Arcade....

And now the attentive reader begins to understand Mr. Bessel's
interpretation of the first part of this strange story. The being whose
frantic rush through London had inflicted so much injury and disaster
had indeed Mr. Bessel's body, but it was not Mr. Bessel. It was an evil
spirit out of that strange world beyond existence, into which Mr. Bessel
had so rashly ventured. For twenty hours it held possession of him, and
for all those twenty hours the dispossessed spirit-body of Mr. Bessel
was going to and fro in that unheard-of middle world of shadows seeking
help in vain. He spent many hours beating at the minds of Mr. Vincey and
of his friend Mr. Hart. Each, as we know, he roused by his efforts. But
the language that might convey his situation to these helpers across the
gulf he did not know; his feeble fingers groped vainly and powerlessly
in their brains. Once, indeed, as we have already told, he was able to
turn Mr. Vincey aside from his path so that he encountered the stolen
body in its career, but he could not make him understand the thing that
had happened: he was unable to draw any help from that encounter....

All through those hours the persuasion was overwhelming in Mr. Bessel's
mind that presently his body would be killed by its furious tenant, and
he would have to remain in this shadow-land for evermore. So that those
long hours were a growing agony of fear. And ever as he hurried to and
fro in his ineffectual excitement, innumerable spirits of that world
about him mobbed him and confused his mind. And ever an envious
applauding multitude poured after their successful fellow as he went
upon his glorious career.

For that, it would seem, must be the life of these bodiless things of
this world that is the shadow of our world. Ever they watch, coveting
a way into a mortal body, in order that they may descend, as