“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 mysteri