Hooper gave ready assurance, and Karl acquainted him with a good many, substantially all the main points, of the facts I have previously recorded. The American was shrewd and precise. He was studying Roman Law and Jurisprudence at the English University, his avowed object being to devote his life to the codification of his own country’s laws. Therefore, among the young men of his college, Karl could have found none of quicker and clearer perceptiveness. When the recital reached the previous night’s inexplicable events he checked each item as though it were a section of a statute. “There is one feature of your unparalleled experiences which stands out in bold relief,” he commented, at the close of Grier’s story. “You can see and hear only that which is taking place at the precise moment of your trance, as we shall call it. You can look into neither the past nor the future. Last night, allowing for a difference of five hours, you actually saw people dining and listening to the band at Manhattan Beach. It is noteworthy that you saw only, and did not hear. Yet you heard the Armenian yelling for help when he was a mile from the ship. The deduction is obvious. The electric waves, or whatever they are, which convey impressions to your brain, follow the known laws of the transmission of light and sound. If I were poetically inclined, I might put it that you can see the spheres but you cannot hear their music. Now, I am going to ask you, straight out, if you will oblige me by ringing up that young lady again.” “Now?” “Right now. It is not far from the same hour.” “I will try,” said Karl, simply. In order to reproduce kindred conditions he extinguished the light, raised the blind and the window, and looked out. “Last night,” he said, “I nearly fell into the quad in my excitement.” “No fear of that unless I fall too,” was the emphatic reply. Karl focused his thoughts on Maggie Hutchinson. He found it easy to follow the trend of circumstances which led up to the vision of the preceding day. Soon there came the now almost familiar darkening of the air and the instantaneous disappearance of surrounding objects, to be succeeded by a well-defined view of a somewhat dimly lighted but spacious apartment. It was a very large room, with an unusually low ceiling, but the decorations, carpets, panels, and queer little windows were fashioned or conceived with much taste. At the farther end was a grand piano. In the center of the floor was a sunken space, guarded by rails. Seated on a sort of divan which ran round the walls were a great many ladies and some half-dozen gentlemen. They were reading, talking, or lying comfortably ensconced in cushions. But the odd thing was that the room and its inhabitants absolutely defied the law of gravity. No earthquake that ever shook the globe could make a house sway in such fashion without causing irretrievable ruin.