rly or intelligibly
to you--and then, behold, I am back again. First, that is, I disappear.
Then I reappear."

"Just so," exclaimed Dr. Silence, "and that is why a few--"

"Why a few moments ago," interrupted Mr. Mudge, taking the words out of
his mouth, "you found me gone, and then saw me return. The music of that
wretched German band sent me off. Your intense thinking about me brought
me back--when the band had stopped its Wagner. I saw you approach the
peep-hole and I saw Barker's intention of doing so later. For me no
interiors are hidden. I see inside. When in that state the content of
your mind, as of your body, is open to me as the day. Oh, dear, oh,
dear, oh, dear!"

Mr. Mudge stopped and again mopped his brow. A light trembling ran over
the surface of his small body like wind over grass. He still held
tightly to the arms of the chair.

"At first," he presently resumed, "my new experiences were so vividly
interesting that I felt no alarm. There was no room for it. The alarm
came a little later."

"Then you actually penetrated far enough into that state to experience
yourself as a normal portion of it?" asked the doctor, leaning forward,
deeply interested.

Mr. Mudge nodded a perspiring face in reply.

"I did," he whispered, "undoubtedly I did. I am coming to all that. It
began first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss of
consciousness--"

"The spirit, of course, can never sleep. Only the body becomes
unconscious," interposed John Silence.

"Yes, we know that--theoretically. At night, of course, the spirit is
active elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simply
because the brain stays behind and receives no record. But I found
that, while remaining conscious, I also retained memory. I had attained
to the state of continuous consciousness, for at night I regularly, with
the first approaches of drowsiness, entered _nolens volens_ the
four-dimensional world.

"For a time this happened regularly, and I could not control it; though
later I found a way to regulate it better. Apparently sleep is
unnecessary in the higher--the four-dimensional--body. Yes, perhaps. But
I should infinitely have preferred dull sleep to the knowledge. For,
unable to control my movements, I wandered to and fro, attracted, owing
to my partial development and premature arrival, to parts of this new
world that alarmed me more and more. It was the awful waste and drift of
a monstrous world, so utterly di