"About eighteen months ago," Lessing began, "my wife was in rather bad health. It was some sort of nervous trouble, which I need not enter into here, but the doctor said she needed complete change, and that she must positively live in the country for some time, a year or two at least. We came down here. I bought the piece of ground up the hill there and built the little bungalow we are living in, with the idea of using it later on, when her health is restored, simply as a summer cottage. I have a fondness for dabbling in chemistry, as I think I told you, and shortly after we moved down here I built that sort of outdoor study you have seen, so that I could have a place, perfectly quiet, that I could work in without being disturbed, and without messing the house up with my things. I am not a good sleeper. I sit up pretty late at night as a rule, and it worries me to know I'm disturbing other people in the house or that the women are liable to drop in in their dressing-gowns at half-past one or so, to ask whether I'm going to bed or not. "My laboratory has a top light for day use, and I have rigged up an acetylene lamp just over my table, with a pretty strong light. One night last fall I happened to be working rather late. As a rule I have no difficulty whatever about keeping awake--it's the other way about, in fact--but along about one o'clock I began to get rather drowsy. It might have been the fumes of the chemicals I was using, but I'm used to that, and anyway I don't think they could have affected me. My interest in what I was doing was still awake, but the other side of my mind seemed to get drowsy at the same time. I fought against it a long while, and then gradually I seemed to get the consciousness of something--some presence--in or near the room. I don't know if you have ever attended a séance, Haverill?" "Never--of any account." My cigarette had burned down to my fingers, and I threw it away. I was beginning to get keenly interested in his story. "Well, if you had, you would know that one sometimes gets the sense of a materialization some minutes before it actually takes place. I suppose the subconscious part of one's mind acts more quickly than the senses in receiving an impression. Anyway that was what seemed to happen with me. I waited. I was awake; I want you to understand that clearly. I was as awake as I am now. I saw everything about me, but I seemed to see it in a quite impersonal sort of way.