unnatural vitality of his brain. It was as if he thought intensely, violently, and yet could not think at all, as a man terrified may stare with wide open eyes and yet perceive nothing, lacking for a moment the faculty of perceiving. So Valentine waited, like some blind man with glaring eyeballs. And then, passing into another stage of sensation, he found himself vehemently and rapidly discussing possibilities of terror, forming mental pictures of all the things, of all the powers, that we cannot see. He embodied, materialized, the wind, the voice of the sea, the angry, hot scent of certain flowers, of the white lily, the tuberose, the hyacinth. He created figures for light, for darkness, for a wail, for a laugh, and set them in array all around him in the blackness. But none of these imagined figures could cause the horror which he felt. He drove away the whole pack of them with a silent cry, a motionless dismissing wave of his hands. But there might be other beings round us, condemned to eternal invisibility lest the sight of them should drive men mad. We cannot see them, he thought. As a rule, we have no sensation of these gaunt neighbours, no suspicion of their approach, of their companionship. We do not hear their footsteps. We are utterly unconscious of them. Yet may there not be physical or mental paroxysms, during which we become conscious of them, during which we know, beyond all power of doubt, that they are near us, with us? And, in such paroxysms, is it not possible for them to break through the intangible and yet all-powerful barriers that divide them from us, and to touch us, caress us, attack us? Valentine believed that he was immersed in such a paroxysm, and that the barriers were in process of being broken down. He seemed actually to hear the faint cry of an approaching being, the dim uproar of its violent efforts to obtain its sinister will, and gain the power to make itself known to him by some ghastly and malignant deed. He was unutterably afraid. "The hand again!" Julian suddenly cried. "Valentine, is it yours? Why don't you answer? I say, is it yours?" "No," Valentine forced himself, with difficulty, to reply. "For God's sake then--the light!" Valentine felt for it, but his hand shook and did not find the button. "Make haste, Val. What are you doing? Ah!" The room sprang into view, and Julian's eyes, with a furious, sick eagerness, sought his hands. "Valentine," he exclaimed hoarsely, "I see nothing, but I've got hold of the hand still. I've got it tight. Put your hand here--that's it--under mine. Now d'you feel the thing?" Julian's hand, contracted as if grasping another, was in the air, about an inch, or an inch and a half, above the surface of the table. Valentine obediently thrust his hand beneath it. He now shook his head. "I feel nothing," he said. "There is nothing."