ame
time, and, therefore, for two bodies to occupy the same space. That
would be perfectly easy of supposition to the being to whom time and
eternity were one. Yes, I believe that when the great problem is solved,
it will be found that the fourth dimension _is_ duration, extending in
all directions like the circumference of a circle, the edges of a cube,
and the curves of the conic sections.

"Yes, I really do think I have got it at last, and that confounded Mummy
has taught it me. Still, I don't think I ought to speak as
disrespectfully as that of a young lady who has been dead for the last
fifty centuries or so and has come back. Yes, that is it. It _is_
duration."

Perfectly satisfied for the time being with this solution, he turned
over on to his right side--for, to his disgust, he found that he had
been lying on his back, a most pernicious position where dreaming is
concerned--and went to sleep. Half an hour later he was awakened by
another heaven-shaking crash of thunder.

CHAPTER IV

THIEVES IN THE NIGHT

This time he was very much awake. In fact, his sense of wakefulness
seemed almost superhuman. His faculties were preternaturally alert, and
he had a feeling of what might properly be called mental extension--it
was not exaltation--- which seemed to widen his mental vision
enormously. Problems which had puzzled him to desperation suddenly
became as obvious as the first axioms of geometry. In short, he felt as
though he had become a new man, re-born, or re-incarnated, into another
world which contained the one he had so far lived in, but which was
infinitely vaster in some undefined way which was not yet plain to him.

He lay for some time thinking over the extraordinary happenings of the
evening and his dream, which he remembered with astonishing exactness of
detail. Then a sudden turn of thought carried his mind to the subject of
miracles, apparitions, ghosts, and mathematical impossibilities such as
squaring the circle and doubling the cube--and to his amazement he found
that the impossible of yesterday had become the possible--nay, the
almost absurdly obvious of to-night.

He went on thinking and wondering until he began to half-believe that he
was dreaming again, so he got up and switched on the electric light.
Then he turned involuntarily towards the wardrobe, which, as usual, had
a long mirror running down the middle of it. To his amazement he did not
see himself reflected in it. The mirror