fferent to all we know and see that I
cannot even hint at the nature of the sights and objects and beings in
it. More than that, I cannot even remember them. I cannot now picture
them to myself even, but can recall only the _memory of the impression_
they made upon me, the horror and devastating terror of it all. To be in
several places at once, for instance--"

"Perfectly," interrupted John Silence, noticing the increase of the
other's excitement, "I understand exactly. But now, please, tell me a
little more of this alarm you experienced, and how it affected you."

"It's not the disappearing and reappearing _per se_ that I mind,"
continued Mr. Mudge, "so much as certain other things. It's seeing
people and objects in their weird entirety, in their true and complete
shapes, that is so distressing. It introduces me to a world of monsters.
Horses, dogs, cats, all of which I loved; people, trees, children; all
that I have considered beautiful in life--everything, from a human face
to a cathedral--appear to me in a different shape and aspect to all I
have known before. I cannot perhaps convince you why this should be
terrible, but I assure you that it is so. To hear the human voice
proceeding from this novel appearance which I scarcely recognise as a
human body is ghastly, simply ghastly. To see inside everything and
everybody is a form of insight peculiarly distressing. To be so confused
in geography as to find myself one moment at the North Pole, and the
next at Clapham Junction--or possibly at both places simultaneously--is
absurdly terrifying. Your imagination will readily furnish other details
without my multiplying my experiences now. But you have no idea what it
all means, and how I suffer."

Mr. Mudge paused in his panting account and lay back in his chair. He
still held tightly to the arms as though they could keep him in the
world of sanity and three measurements, and only now and again released
his left hand in order to mop his face. He looked very thin and white
and oddly unsubstantial, and he stared about him as though he saw into
this other space he had been talking about.

John Silence, too, felt warm. He had listened to every word and had made
many notes. The presence of this man had an exhilarating effect upon
him. It seemed as if Mr. Racine Mudge still carried about with him
something of that breathless Higher-Space condition he had been
describing. At any rate, Dr. Silence had himself advanced sufficie