A struggle of the mind. I knew then that every quality of mind inherent to me was winging backward: tugging, pulling, but I fought against it. And I became aware too of a different struggle within me. I had sensed it for some time past but now it sprang into keen intensity. A struggle of the physical. A vague racking pain possessed me. Dull, detached seemingly from my consciousness, yet I knew it was the pain of my body. It grew sharper. Not intolerable; but frightening with a sense of horror. It permeated my every fiber; tingling with infinitely tiny needles; and tugging, physically as my mind was tugging, to resume its original state. Like a chip in an undertow, I was being drawn backward.... "Now." I felt Will's tense voice. And Ala's soft words. "We--are--passed. Hold me--now." Someone was clutching my arm. I seemed floating, storm-tossed--a feather blown in a wind I could not feel. But abruptly the struggle ceased; vaguely I was conscious that my feet were standing upon something solid--Will and Bee were here--Ala was here--I was a reality once more, and there were rational thoughts to think and real things to see. CHAPTER VIII THE REALM OF NEW DIMENSIONS The shadows of our world were vanished. The Borderland, with its darkness, its drab empty slope, was gone. A new world lay spread about me; new companions. And I was conscious of a new entity--a new Robert Manse, who was myself. I remember now that my first thought was surprise that I should be able to visualize things of strangeness. But now I know that once over the Borderland my _mind_ itself had changed, yet retaining of its old self just enough, so that I might be conscious of the strangeness. In a grey half-light of luminosity seemingly inherent to everything, I found myself standing upon a hillside, gazing down an empty slope of greyness. Was it land? I can only say that it seemed solid beneath me; solid, quivering with a tiny tremble; vibrating, and within itself vaguely luminous. Overhead was darkness. Yet hardly that, for the same luminosity was there; and I felt that I was gazing, not through emptiness but rather through some tenuous fluid illimitable to my vision, with things there to see, as yet--for me--unseeable. The slope before me was empty. But shapes were materializing; it was as though I had come out of the darkness, with eyes not yet accustomed to the light. I fancied I saw water in the distance. A white lake; but when I stared, it seemed more like a grey rolling cloud. Was it liquid?...