Mrs Jefferson looked up sharply. "Well," she said, turning the magazine round to read its title. "This is about the queerest story I ever read. I wish people wouldn't write improbabilities that no one can swallow." "The question is rather what is an improbability?" answered her companion. "It is only a matter of the capacity of the age to receive what is new. A few years ago electricity was improbable, yet look at the telegraph and the telephone. Still further back, who would have believed that railways would exist above ground and under ground, and mock at the difficulties of rivers and mountains? What have you discovered strange enough to be called `improbable'?" "Oh! it's a story of a man who gets out of his own body and does all sorts of queer things, and then goes back to it again, just when he pleases. Finally, he falls in love with a woman as queer as himself, and finding he has a rival, he just gets rid of him by force of will-power. However, the day they are to be married, the woman is found dead in her bed. It appears that she also could get out of her body when she felt inclined, but she did it once too often, and couldn't get back in time, so they buried her, at least they buried one of her bodies; as far as I can make out she had _two_." "And you think that improbable?" questioned the stranger calmly. Her beautiful deep eyes were looking straight into the flushed excited face beside her. Mrs Ray Jefferson met their gaze, and was conscious of an odd little unaccountable thrill. "Certainly I do," she said. "Who could believe that anyone can jump in or out of their skin just as the fancy takes them?" The stranger's beautiful lips grew scornful. "Oh!" she said, "if you like to put the subject in that light, it may well look ridiculous and impossible. Ignorance is always more or less arrogant. It is man's habit to fancy that all creation was made for him. There are few things of which he is so utterly ignorant, and of which he thinks so little, as that mystery of _himself_ incarnated in the temporary prison-house of flesh and blood. Did he once realise what he might be--did he ever raise his eyes from the glow-worm light of earth to the stupendous glories of the sun of wisdom, he would know better than to cavil at what you call `improbable.' For in nature all things are possible, but man has neither time nor patience to trace out their mysteries, or seek in their development the key to those mysteries." "Gracious sakes," muttered Mrs Jefferson to herself in alarm. "I'm sure she's a Rosicrucian or something of that sort. It's interesting, but uncanny. I'm quite out of my depth. I don't know what she means. Do you really mean to say," she added aloud, "that this story might be true; that you have two bodies and can slip from one to the other?"