“Tonight, Humphrey, we must make another journey.  I would visit the seat of the war.”

“I do not wish to go,” I said feebly.

“What you wish does not matter,” he replied.  “I wish that you should go, and therefore you must.”

“Listen, Oro,” I exclaimed.  “I do not like this business; it seems dangerous to me.”

“There is no danger if you are obedient, Humphrey.”

“I think there is.  I do not understand what happens.  Do you make use of what the Lady Yva called the Fourth Dimension, so that our bodies pass over the seas and through mountains, like the vibrations of our Wireless, of which I was speaking to you?”

“No, Humphrey.  That method is good and easy, but I do not use it because if I did we should be visible in the places which we visit, since there all the atoms that make a man would collect together again and be a man.”

“What, then, do you do?” I asked, exasperated.

“Man, Humphrey, is not one; he is many.  Thus, amongst other things he has a Double, which can see and hear, as he can in the flesh, if it is separated from the flesh.”

“The old Egyptians believed that,” I said.

“Did they?  Doubtless they inherited the knowledge from us, the Sons of Wisdom.  The cup of our learning was so full that, keep it secret as we would, from time to time some of it overflowed among the vulgar, and doubtless thus the light of our knowledge still burns feebly in the world.”

I reflected to myself that whatever might be their other characteristics, the Sons of Wisdom had lost that of modesty, but I only asked how he used his Double, supposing that it existed.

“Very easily,” he answered.  “In sleep it can be drawn from the body and sent upon its mission by one that is its master.”

“Then while you were asleep for all those thousands of years your Double must have made many journeys.”

“Perhaps,” he replied quietly, “and my spirit also, which is another part of me that may have dwelt in the bodies of other men.  But unhappily, if so I forget, and that is why I have so much to learn and must even make use of such poor instruments as you, Humphrey.”

“Then if I sleep and you distil my Double out of me, I suppose that you sleep too.  In that case who distils your Double out of you, Lord Oro?”

He grew angry and answered: 

“Ask no more questions, blind and ignorant as you are.  It is your part not to examine, but to obey.  Sleep now,” and again he waved his hand over me.

In an instant, as it seemed, we were standing in a grey old town that I judged from its appearance must be either in northern France or Belgium.  It was much shattered by bombardment; the church, for instance, was a ruin; also many of the houses had been burnt.  Now, however, no firing was going on for the town had been taken.  The streets were full of armed men wearing the German uniform and helmet.  We passed down them and were able to see into the houses.  In some of these were German soldiers engaged in looting and in other things so horrible that even the unmoved Oro turned away his head.