More, they, or some of them, had learned the use of the Fourth Dimension, that is their most instructed individuals, could move through opposing things, as well as over them, up into them and across them.  This power these possessed in a two-fold form.  I mean, that they could either disintegrate their bodies at one spot and cause them to integrate again at another, or they could project what the old Egyptians called the Ka or Double, and modern Theosophists name the Astral Shape, to any distance.  Moreover, this Double, or Astral Shape, while itself invisible, still, so to speak, had the use of its senses.  It could see, it could hear, and it could remember, and, on returning to the body, it could avail itself of the experience thus acquired.

Thus, at least, said Yva, while Bickley contemplated her with a cold and unbelieving eye.  She even went further and alleged that in certain instances, individuals of her extinct race had been able to pass through the ether and to visit other worlds in the depths of space.

“Have you ever done that?” asked Bickley.

“Once or twice I dreamed that I did,” she replied quietly.

“We can all dream,” he answered.

As it was my lot to make acquaintance with this strange and uncanny power at a later date, I will say no more of it now.

Telepathy, she declared, was also a developed gift among the Sons of Wisdom; indeed, they seem to have used it as we use wireless messages.  Only, in their case, the sending and receiving stations were skilled and susceptible human beings who went on duty for so many hours at a time.  Thus intelligence was transmitted with accuracy and despatch.  Those who had this faculty were, she said, also very apt at reading the minds of others and therefore not easy to deceive.

“Is that how you know that I had been trying to analyse your Life-water?” asked Bickley.

“Yes,” she answered, with her unvarying smile.  “At the moment I spoke thereof you were wondering whether my father would be angry if he knew that you had taken the water in a little flask.”  She studied him for a moment, then added:  “Now you are wondering, first, whether I did not see you take the water from the fountain and guess the purpose, and, secondly, whether perhaps Bastin did not tell me what you were doing with it when we met in the sepulchre.”

“Look here,” said the exasperated Bickley, “I admit that telepathy and thought-reading are possible to a certain limited extent.  But supposing that you possess those powers, as I think in English, and you do not know English, how can you interpret what is passing in my mind?”

“Perhaps you have been teaching me English all this while without knowing it, Bickley.  In any case, it matters little, seeing that what I read is the thought, not the language with which it is clothed.  The thought comes from your mind to mine—­ that is, if I wish it, which is not often—­and I interpret it in my own or other tongues.”