A silence had fallen. The hum within me no longer sounded. It was a shock to see that little phantom clock; the movement of its pendulum was visible, but its ticking heart gave no sound. A preternatural silence hung like a grey shroud over a universe of shadows. Then I heard Will's _soundless voice_--heard it clearly now with the knowledge that it was wholly mental, a transference of thought which only my imagination and memory endowed with a familiar physical timbre. "Rob. Come back to us! Hold your thoughts. Stay here with us." And Bee's imploring voice, "We are here, Rob. All here together. Sit up--look at us--speak to us." Was I indeed, nothing now but a mind? Were my thoughts all that remained of me? I fought for reality; for stability; fought for anything real that I could clutch, to which desperately I might cling. Where were Will and Bee? Somewhere here in the shadows. An abyss of shadows everywhere. I thought I could see a thousand miles into that pregnant darkness. I could wander in it at will; my thoughts could wander everywhere. But I must have conquered, for I found myself sitting up, with Bee and Will beside me. * * * * * "There, that's better." I felt the relief in Will's tone. "Hold yourself firm--you'll be used to it in a moment. It's strange, isn't it?" Strange; scarce have I words--and even those I choose are almost futile--to picture what I saw and felt. The world I had left lay all about me--dim, transparent shadows of familiar things. The room of Will's house--we were sitting just below the level of its floor. Around the room--above it, to one side of it--the phantom house itself was visible. Beyond the house, the gardens, the sombre ghosts of trees standing about--a shadowy semblance of the winding village street--other houses--a hill in the distance-- Mingled with all these shadows--the reality I had left--was the reality in which now I existed. The Borderland, we had been calling it. A vast realm of luminous darkness. A rolling slope upon which we were sitting--a slope, something newly tangible at least, which I could vaguely see and vaguely feel beneath me. A realm of pregnant darkness, filled with the shadows of the world I had left; and filled also with things as yet unseen--things as yet unthought.... The realm of unthought things.... Will's voice seemed saying, "So strange--but you'll be used to it presently."