After the familiar passing through darkness into light--this momentary eclipse being apparently a mechanical readjustment of the normal functions of the brain to their novel requirements--he found himself a spectator of a meeting between two men, a meeting which was seemingly taking place in a second-floor office overlooking the junction of two busy thoroughfares. He could hear nothing. He was in the position of an audience watching the cinematographic representation of an express train thundering through a station--there was all the realism of life and motion, but no sound. In his case, of course, there were the added illusions of color and sunlight, nor was the vision distracted by perplexing flutterings of a winding film. One of the men was Constantine, tall, sallow-faced, dark-eyed, habited in evening dress, but showing an Oriental love of display by the pair of diamond studs blazing in his shirt-front, the thrilling design of his brocade waistcoat, and the braid, two inches wide, which seamed his trousers. His companion, also attired in the garb abhorred by George Bernard Shaw, was, in all save his un-American aspect (both men being unmistakably “aliens”) the exact antithesis of Constantine. A short, tubby man, the product, it appeared, of a Polish-Jew father and a Mexican half-caste mother, he might be likened to a human olive. He was so round, so greeny-bronze in complexion, that Karl, summing him up afterwards, said: “When I meet him, I shall half expect to see him preserved in vinegar inside a bottle with a flamboyant label.” The two were discussing a matter of grave interest, judging by their faces. Karl made a sub-conscious effort to listen to what they were saying, but it failed, though he subsequently recalled a faint knowledge of vague sounds, as though he were endeavoring to hear through thick glass. The room was sumptuously furnished. The walls were decorated with photographs, large and small, of gentlemen with wide and expressive mouths and abundant hair, and of ladies with goo-goo eyes and even more abundant hair, wearing picture hats for the most part. Several framed letters, either typewritten or hugely scrawled, were crowded together over the fireplace, and they set forth in unguarded terms the varied excellences of “Dear Steindal,” or “Mr. Wilhelm Steindal,” or “Wilhelm Steindal, Esq.” Through the open windows Karl saw electric cars hurrying to and fro beneath, the bright steel rails commanding a clear center of the street, while the general traffic was made up of light trolleys, delivery vans and bicycles, with hardly ever a cab or private carriage. On two sides of a diminutive street lamp he read “Broadway” and “W. 22d St.,” so he assumed that he had, for some occult reason, found his way to New York.