re was no one in sight--not even a car--and the open windows of the
apartment houses across the Drive seemed very quiet. People slept behind
them.

It was only a little after dawn. The sun, blazing and tinted with pink,
had hardly risen from the horizon. The lake was still lined with dark
shadows behind glittering ridges of morning sunlight, and a cool breeze
played across my face, coming in from the east. Over the city, the sound
of a street car rumbling into motion, rising and dying away, was like
the crowing of a rooster in the country.

I shivered, and began to swim. A few strokes brought me to the
embankment, and I clambered up, almost freezing as I left the water. I
was fully clothed, but without a hat. Perhaps I had lost it in the lake.
I stood there, dripping and chill, and suddenly I realized that I had
just waked up in the water. I had no recollection of falling in, nor
even of being there. I could remember nothing of the previous night.

A glance along the Drive told me where I was, at the corner of
Fifty-third street. My apartment was only a few blocks away. Had I been
walking in my sleep? My mind was a blank, with turbulent, dim
impressions moving confusedly under the surface.

* * * * *

Trembling in the chill air, I started up the Drive. I must go home and
change at once. Something came back to me--a memory of talking to some
friends at the Club. But was that last night? Or months ago? It was as
though I had slept for months. We had had a few drinks--could I have
been drunk, and fallen into the lake on my way home? But I never took
more than two or three drinks. Something had happened.

Then I remembered the stranger. We had all been sitting about the
lounge, talking of something. What had we been discussing? Franklin had
mentioned Einstein's new theory--we had played with that for a while,
none of us with the least idea what it was about. Then the conversation
had shifted slowly from one topic to another, all having to do with
scientific discoveries.

Somewhere in the midst of it, Barclay had come in. He brought with him a
guest--a straight, fine-looking man with a military carriage, about
fifty years old. Barclay had introduced him as Mr. Melbourne. He spoke
with a slight southern accent.

In some way Melbourne and I gravitated into a corner. We went on with
the conversation while the others left it. They drifted into politics,
drawing together about the table whe