to me that as I found myself in his, so he must be in possession of my body, of my strength, that is, and my future.  But how to prove it?  Then, as I thought, the thing became so incredible, even to me, that my mind reeled, and I had to pinch myself, to feel my toothless gums, to see myself in the glass, and touch the things about me, before I could steady myself to face the facts again.  Was all life hallucination?  Was I indeed Elvesham, and he me?  Had I been dreaming of Eden overnight?  Was there any Eden?  But if I was Elvesham, I should remember where I was on the previous morning, the name of the town in which I lived, what happened before the dream began.  I struggled with my thoughts.  I recalled the queer doubleness of my memories overnight.  But now my mind was clear.  Not the ghost of any memories but those proper to Eden could I raise.

“This way lies insanity!” I cried in my piping voice.  I staggered to my feet, dragged my feeble, heavy limbs to the washhand-stand, and plunged my grey head into a basin of cold water.  Then, towelling myself, I tried again.  It was no good.  I felt beyond all question that I was indeed Eden, not Elvesham.  But Eden in Elvesham’s body!

Had I been a man of any other age, I might have given myself up to my fate as one enchanted.  But in these sceptical days miracles do not pass current.  Here was some trick of psychology.  What a drug and a steady stare could do, a drug and a steady stare, or some similar treatment, could surely undo.  Men have lost their memories before.  But to exchange memories as one does umbrellas!  I laughed.  Alas! not a healthy laugh, but a wheezing, senile titter.  I could have fancied old Elvesham laughing at my plight, and a gust of petulant anger, unusual to me, swept across my feelings.  I began dressing eagerly in the clothes I found lying about on the floor, and only realised when I was dressed that it was an evening suit I had assumed.  I opened the wardrobe and found some more ordinary clothes, a pair of plaid trousers, and an old-fashioned dressing-gown.  I put a venerable smoking-cap on my venerable head, and, coughing a little from my exertions, tottered out upon the landing.

It was then, perhaps, a quarter to six, and the blinds were closely drawn and the house quite silent.  The landing was a spacious one, a broad, richly-carpeted staircase went down into the darkness of the hall below, and before me a door ajar showed me a writing-desk, a revolving bookcase, the back of a study chair, and a fine array of bound books, shelf upon shelf.

“My study,” I mumbled, and walked across the landing.  Then at the sound of my voice a thought struck me, and I went back to the bedroom and put in the set of false teeth.  They slipped in with the ease of old, habit.  “That’s better,” said I, gnashing them, and so returned to the study.