He dressed himself leisurely, thinking of the wonderful adventures into living that lay before him. He rehearsed the simple instructions that Vanlief had given him the night before. It was all utterly simple. As one looked into the mirror, the spirit of that one lay on the surface, waiting for the next person that glanced that way. There followed a complete exodus of the spirit from the one body into the other. The recipient was himself plus the soul of the other. The exodus left that other in a state something like physical collapse. There would be, for the recipient of the new personality, a sense of double consciousness; the mind would be like a palimpsest, the one will and the one habit imposed upon the other. The fact that the person whose spirit passed from him upon the magic mirror was left more or less a wreck was cause for using the experiment charily, as the Professor took pains to warn Orson. There was a certain risk. The mirror might be broken; one could never tell. It would be better to pick one's subjects wisely, always with a definite purpose. This man might be used to teach that side of life; that man another. It was not a thing to toy with. It was to be played with as little as human life itself. Vivisection was a pastime to this; this implicated the spirit, the other only the body. Consideration of the new avenues opening for his intelligence had already begun to alter Vane's outlook on life. Persons who remarked him, a little later, strolling the avenue, wondered at the brilliance of his look. He seemed suddenly sprayed with a new youth, a new enthusiasm. It was not, as some of his conversations of that morning proved, an utter lapse into optimism on his part; but it was an exchange of the mere passive side of pessimism for its healthier, more buoyant side. He was able to smile to himself as he met the various human marionettes of the avenue; the persons whose names you would be sure to read every Sunday in the society columns, and who seemed, consequently, out of place in any more aristocratic air. He bowed to the newest beauty, he waved a hand to the most perennial of the faded beaux. The vociferous attire of the actors, who idled conspicuously before the shop-windows, caused him inward shouts of laughter; a day or so ago the same sight would have embittered his hour for him. At Twenty-third street something possessed him to patronize one of the Sicilian flower-sellers. The man had, happily, not importuned him; he merely held his wares, and waited, mutely. Orson put a sprig of lily-of-the-valley into his coat.