In making clear his motives he had even broached the subject of twin souls--the doctrine that each spirit is originally dual, but incarnates as two individuals--a male and a female in the flesh. He alleged that since a child he had felt a vague prompting toward the Dog Star, which he could not understand until he went there in the astral form, once he had gained the power, and found on Palos a woman--his true counterpart, his twin soul, as he declared his belief. But, to accomplish his mating with her, Croft declared further that he had done a most remarkable thing. Discovering a man dying from a mental rather than a bodily condition on the other star, he had waited until his death occurred and then appropriated the still physically viable body to himself; and he explained the thing in a very comprehensible manner at the time, describing the whole procedure in a scientific way, until unbelief faltered and one felt that the thing had been done. Over that body he had acquired as full control as he had of his own. He might at will throw it into a cataleptic sleep. After that he led a sort of double existence--sometimes on Palos, sometimes on earth--until his plans were finally shaped. Then, and then only, did he finally forsake the mundane life for that other and fuller existence which he felt the Palosian girl would make complete. At the time I had questioned him as fully as time and my own knowledge would permit, and he had answered in a way which not only convinced me, but amazed me. I had asked him concerning the time of his passing from earth to that other distant star billions of miles across space, in a universe outside our own. And he had replied that outside the mental atmosphere of man time did not exist; that between the planets was only eternity; that one could not use what was non-existent; that he could reach Palos in the condition toward which he journeyed to it as quickly as I could project myself there in thought. In similar fashion he had been able to meet each of my several interrogative points. In the end I had been content to merely listen to the astounding narrative he told. That story I had not forgotten any more than I had the man himself. But that he should have reversed the experiment which had given him a physical life on Palos in order to return to earth was more astounding still. And yet--if I were to believe the evidences of my well-nigh reeling senses--that was exactly what had occurred; because, no matter how beyond all accepted tenets of life the thing was, I couldn't help feeling that it was Croft's spirit looking out at me from the new patient's eyes. Then as I stood there, tongue-tied, considering those things, he spoke again.