as this other
person dead, and striving mutely for expression? No, surely not, for
this other mind was on the same plane as hers, subject to the same
conditions. Not disembodied entirely, but only relaxed, as she was,
this other personality had wakened and found itself gloriously free.

[Sidenote: A New Self]

A perception of fineness followed. Not everyone was capable of this, and
the conviction brought a pleasant sense of superiority. Above the sordid
world, in some higher realm of space and thought, they two had met, and
saluted one another.

For the first time Edith thought of her body as something separate from
herself, and in the light of a necessary--or unnecessary--evil. This new
self neither hungered nor thirsted nor grew weary; it knew neither cold
nor heat nor illness; pain, like a fourth dimension, was out of its
comprehension, it required neither clothes nor means of transportation,
it simply went, as the wind might, by its own power, when and where it
chose.

Whose mind was it? Was it someone she knew, or someone she was yet to
meet? And in what bodily semblance did it dwell, when it was housed in
its prison? Was it a woman, or a man? Not a woman--Edith instantly
dismissed the idea, for this sense of another personality carried with
it not the feeling of duality or likeness, but of difference, of divine
completion.

Some man she knew, or whom she was to know, freed for the moment from
his earthly environment, roamed celestial ways with her. She was
certain that it was not lasting, that, at the best, it could be of very
brief duration, and this fact of impermanence was the very essence of
its charm, like life itself.

[Sidenote: Who Was the Man?]

The clock down-stairs began to strike--one, two, three--four. It was the
hour of the night when life is at its lowest, the point on the flaming
arc of human existence where it touches the shadow of the unknown,
softening into death or brightening into life according to the swing of
the pendulum. Then, if ever, the mind and body would be apart, Edith
thought, for when the physical forces sink, the spirit must rise to keep
the balance true.

Who was the man? Her husband? No, for they were too far apart to meet
like this. She idly went over the list of her men acquaintances--old
schoolmates, friends of her husband's, husbands of her friends, as one
might call the roll of an assembly, expecting someone to rise and answer
"Here."

Yet it was all in vain, t