“Now you understand what I meant much earlier in our talk when I spoke of chance.  I cannot control my entrance or exit.  Certain people, certain human atmospheres, certain wandering forces, thoughts, desires even—­the radiations of certain combinations of colour, and above all, the vibrations of certain kinds of music, will suddenly throw me into a state of what I can only describe as an intense and terrific inner vibration—­and behold I am off!  Off in the direction at right angles to all our known directions!  Off in the direction the cube takes when it begins to trace the outlines of the new figure!  Off into my breathless and semi-divine Higher Space!  Off, inside myself, into the world of four dimensions!”

He gasped and dropped back into the depths of the immovable chair.

“And there,” he whispered, his voice issuing from among the cushions, “there I have to stay until these vibrations subside, or until they do something which I cannot find words to describe properly or intelligibly to you—­and then, behold, I am back again.  First, that is, I disappear.  Then I reappear.”

“Just so,” exclaimed Dr. Silence, “and that is why a few—­”

“Why a few moments ago,” interrupted Mr. Mudge, taking the words out of his mouth, “you found me gone, and then saw me return.  The music of that wretched German band sent me off.  Your intense thinking about me brought me back—­when the band had stopped its Wagner.  I saw you approach the peep-hole and I saw Barker’s intention of doing so later.  For me no interiors are hidden.  I see inside.  When in that state the content of your mind, as of your body, is open to me as the day.  Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh, dear!”

Mr. Mudge stopped and again mopped his brow.  A light trembling ran over the surface of his small body like wind over grass.  He still held tightly to the arms of the chair.

“At first,” he presently resumed, “my new experiences were so vividly interesting that I felt no alarm.  There was no room for it.  The alarm came a little later.”

“Then you actually penetrated far enough into that state to experience yourself as a normal portion of it?” asked the doctor, leaning forward, deeply interested.

Mr. Mudge nodded a perspiring face in reply.

“I did,” he whispered, “undoubtedly I did.  I am coming to all that.  It began first at night, when I realised that sleep brought no loss of consciousness—­”

“The spirit, of course, can never sleep.  Only the body becomes unconscious,” interposed John Silence.

“Yes, we know that—­theoretically.  At night, of course, the spirit is active elsewhere, and we have no memory of where and how, simply because the brain stays behind and receives no record.  But I found that, while remaining conscious, I also retained memory.  I had attained to the state of continuous consciousness, for at night I regularly, with the first approaches of drowsiness, entered nolens volens the four-dimensional world.