“Let me ask if what I saw was hypnotism?” repeated Henley. “I ask this, first, because I know it is impossible to see through a brick wall, even if there should be such a room in the house; and, secondly, because I cannot believe that I was dreaming, consequently the thing could not have been real.” “Hypnotism is a good enough word,” answered Ah Ben; “but that which men generally understand by the real, and that which they consider the unreal, are not so far apart as they suppose. You say the room was not real, and yet you saw it; had you wished, you might have touched it, which is certainly all the evidence you have of the existence of the room in which we are now sitting. Hypnotism is not a cause of hallucination, as is commonly supposed, but of fact. Its effects are not illusory, but real. Perhaps it would be more correct to say that they are _as real_ as anything else, and that _all_ the phenomena of nature are mere illusions of the senses, which they undoubtedly are. But whichever side we take, all appearances are the result of the same general cause--that of mental vibration. Matter has no real existence.” Paul was meditating on what he had seen and what he was now hearing. Ah Ben's words were endowed with an added force by the vision of the mysterious room. “When you tell me that there is practically no difference between the real and the unreal, and that matter has no real existence, I must confess to some perplexity,” observed Henley. Ah Ben looked up and smoothed the furrows in his withered cheek thoughtfully for a minute before he answered: