Now I know, my reader, that the foregoing seems all a farrago.  I agree with you.  It is farrago.  It was experience, however.  It was just as real to me as is the snake beheld by a man in delirium tremens.

Possibly, by the most liberal estimate, it may have taken Ed Morrell two minutes to tap his question.  Yet, to me, aeons elapsed between the first tap of his knuckle and the last.  No longer could I tread my starry path with that ineffable pristine joy, for my way was beset with dread of the inevitable summons that would rip and tear me as it jerked me back to my strait-jacket hell.  Thus my aeons of star-wandering were aeons of dread.

And all the time I knew it was Ed Morrell’s knuckle that thus cruelly held me earth-bound.  I tried to speak to him, to ask him to cease.  But so thoroughly had I eliminated my body from my consciousness that I was unable to resurrect it.  My body lay dead in the jacket, though I still inhabited the skull.  In vain I strove to will my foot to tap my message to Morrell.  I reasoned I had a foot.  And yet, so thoroughly had I carried out the experiment, I had no foot.

Next—­and I know now that it was because Morrell had spelled his message quite out—­I pursued my way among the stars and was not called back.  After that, and in the course of it, I was aware, drowsily, that I was falling asleep, and that it was delicious sleep.  From time to time, drowsily, I stirred—­please, my reader, don’t miss that verb—­I stirred. I moved my legs, my arms.  I was aware of clean, soft bed linen against my skin.  I was aware of bodily well-being.  Oh, it was delicious!  As thirsting men on the desert dream of splashing fountains and flowing wells, so dreamed I of easement from the constriction of the jacket, of cleanliness in the place of filth, of smooth velvety skin of health in place of my poor parchment-crinkled hide.  But I dreamed with a difference, as you shall see.

I awoke.  Oh, broad and wide awake I was, although I did not open my eyes.  And please know that in all that follows I knew no surprise whatever.  Everything was the natural and the expected.  I was I, be sure of that. But I was not Darrell Standing.  Darrell Standing had no more to do with the being I was than did Darrell Standing’s parchment-crinkled skin have aught to do with the cool, soft skin that was mine.  Nor was I aware of any Darrell Standing—­as I could not well be, considering that Darrell Standing was as yet unborn and would not be born for centuries.  But you shall see.

I lay with closed eyes, lazily listening.  From without came the clacking of many hoofs moving orderly on stone flags.  From the accompanying jingle of metal bits of man-harness and steed-harness I knew some cavalcade was passing by on the street beneath my windows.  Also, I wondered idly who it was.  From somewhere—­and I knew where, for I knew it was from the inn yard—­came the ring and stamp of hoofs and an impatient neigh that I recognized as belonging to my waiting horse.