s own private world, and as such it would be the last to
go.

But how long could he ... his brain ... maintain its existence?

Mr. Chambers stared at the marine print and for a moment a little
breath of reassurance returned to him. _They_ couldn't take this
away. The rest of the world might dissolve because there was
insufficient power of thought to retain its outward form.

But this room was his. He alone had furnished it. He alone, since
he had first planned the house's building, had lived here.

This room would stay. It must stay on ... it must....

He rose from his chair and walked across the room to the book
case, stood staring at the second shelf with its single volume.
His eyes shifted to the top shelf and swift terror gripped him.

For all the books weren't there. A lot of books weren't there!
Only the most beloved, the most familiar ones.

So the change already had started here! The unfamiliar books were
gone and that fitted in the pattern ... for it would be the least
familiar things that would go first.

Wheeling, he stared across the room. Was it his imagination, or
did the lamp on the table blur and begin to fade away?

But as he stared at it, it became clear again, a solid,
substantial thing.

For a moment real fear reached out and touched him with chilly
fingers. For he knew that this room no longer was proof against
the thing that had happened out there on the street.

Or had it really happened? Might not all this exist within his
own mind? Might not the street be as it always was, with laughing
children and barking dogs? Might not the Red Star confectionery
still exist, splashing the street with the red of its neon sign?

Could it be that he was going mad? He had heard whispers when he
had passed, whispers the gossiping housewives had not intended
him to hear. And he had heard the shouting of boys when he walked
by. They thought him mad. Could he be really mad?

But he knew he wasn't mad. He knew that he perhaps was the sanest
of all men who walked the earth. For he, and he alone, had
foreseen this very thing. And the others had scoffed at him for
it.

Somewhere else the children might be playing on a street. But it
would be a different street. And the children undoubtedly would
be different too.

For the matter of which the street and everything upon it had
been formed would now be cast in a different mold, stolen by
different minds in a different dimension.

_Perhaps we shall com