said to Ruth Seer, which could arrange them in a rational order. And, dreaming in the warmth of the afternoon, with the fragrance and beauty of the wonderful universe filtering into his consciousness, the idea penetrated with ever-growing insistence: Had the gods, by some wonderful chance, by some amazing good fortune, placed in his hands, his, Roger North’s, an instrument, finer, subtler, more delicate, than any of which he had ever dreamed, the consciousness that was materializing as Ruth Seer? He seemed struggling with himself, or rather with another self—a self that was striving to draw him into misty unreal things, and he shrank back into his world of what seemed to him solid, tangible things, things that he could touch and handle and prove by measure and calculation and observation. And then again the larger vision gripped him. Was there indeed a finer, subtler, more wonderful matter, waiting to be explored by different, finer, subtler methods? What was it Dick Carey and Ruth Seer cognized, contracted with outside his ken? Could he be certain it did not exist? “God! it would give you an horizon beyond eternity,” he had said to Ruth Seer; that was true enough—if the vision was true. Always till now he had thought of any vision beyond as a fable, invented by wise men to help lesser men through what was after all but a sorry business. And now, for the first time, it really gripped him—what it would mean if it were not a fable, not a useful deception for weaker men who could not face life as it really was. God! it would give you an horizon beyond eternity! The vision was as yet only a dim muddle of infinite possibilities and Roger North’s mind hated muddle. He was like the blind man of Bethsaida who, when Christ touched his eyes, looked up, and saw men, as trees, walking. Suddenly he got up and moved a photograph of Dick Carey that stood upon his writing-table, moved it to an inconspicuous place on the mantelshelf amongst other photographs. Then he hesitated for a moment before he took one of the others and put it on the writing-table. And this simple action meant that Roger North had put on one side his shrinking from the intangible and invisible and had started on new investigations with new instruments for observation. Then he went back to his chair and began a second orange. Mansfield had just carried out the croquet mallets and balls, and was arranging for the afternoon games in his usual admirable manner. North watched him lazily as he sucked the orange, pleasantly conscious that a new interest had gripped his life, his mind already busy, tabulating, arranging the different subtler matter he proposed to work with. It was here the door opened, and with the little clatter and bustle which always heralded her approach, his wife entered, curled, powdered and adorned, very pretty and very smart, for her afternoon party. A visit from her at this moment was altogether unexpected. It was also unfortunate.