cine for the last twenty years. I
have heard myself called quack and charlatan and impostor, but all the
while I knew I was on the right path. Five years ago I reached the goal,
and since then every day has been a preparation for what we shall do
to-night.'

'I should like to believe it is all true.' Clarke knit his brows, and
looked doubtfully at Dr. Raymond. 'Are you perfectly sure, Raymond, that
your theory is not a phantasmagoria--a splendid vision, certainly, but a
mere vision after all?'

Dr. Raymond stopped in his walk and turned sharply. He was a middle-aged
man, gaunt and thin, of a pale yellow complexion, but as he answered
Clarke and faced him, there was a flush on his cheek.

'Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountain, and hill following after
hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of
ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed-beds by the river. You
see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that
all these things--yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky
to the solid ground beneath our feet--I say that all these are but
dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes.
There _is_ a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision,
beyond these "chases in Arras, dreams in a career," beyond them all as
beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted
that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted
this very night from before another's eyes. You may think all this
strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients
knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.'

Clarke shivered; the white mist gathering over the river was chilly.

'It is wonderful indeed,' he said. 'We are standing on the brink of a
strange world, Raymond, if what you say is true. I suppose the knife is
absolutely necessary?'

'Yes; a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all; a trifling
rearrangement of certain cells, a microscopical alteration that would
escape the attention of ninety-nine brain specialists out of a hundred.
I don't want to bother you with "shop," Clarke; I might give you a mass
of technical detail which would sound very imposing, and would leave you
as enlightened as you are now. But I suppose you have read, casually, in
out-of-the-way corners of your paper, that immense strides have been
made recently in the physiology of the brain