exact counterpart in every respect of this material
frame. It is contained within the material body, as air is contained in
the lungs and in the blood. It is of finer matter than the gross fabric
of our outward body. It is capable of motion with the rapidity of
thought. The laws of space and time do not exist for the mind, and the
Thought Envelope of which we are speaking moves with the swiftness of
the mind."

"Then when your thought body appears?"

"My mind goes with it. I see, I hear, and my consciousness is with my
Thought Envelope. But I want to have a proper interview while on my
thought journeys. That is why I ask you if you would try to speak to me
if I appear."

"But," I objected, "do you really mean that you hope to appear before
me, in my office, as immaterial as gas, as visible as light, and yet to
speak, to touch?"

"That is just what I mean," she replied, laughing, "that and nothing
less. I was in your office the other morning at six o'clock, but no one
was there. I have not got this curious power as yet under complete
control. But when once we are able to direct it at will, imagine what
possibilities it unfolds!"

"But," said I, "if you can be seen and touched, you ought to be
photographed!"

"I wish to be photographed, but no one can say as yet whether such
thought bodies can be photographed. When next I make the experiment I
want you to try. It would be very useful."

Useful indeed! It does not require very vivid imagination to see that if
you can come and go to the uttermost parts of the world in your thought
shape, such Thought Bodies will be indispensable henceforth on every
enterprising newspaper. It would be a great saving on telegraphy. When
my ideal paper comes along, I mentally vowed I would have my hostess as
first member of my staff. But of course it had got to be proved, and
that not only once but a dozen times, before any reliance could be
placed on it.

"I often come down here," said my hostess cheerfully, "after breakfast.
I just lie down in my bedroom in town, and in a moment I find myself
here at Hindhead. Sometimes I am seen, sometimes I am not. But I am
here; seen or unseen, I see. It is a curious gift, and one which I am
studying hard to develop and to control."

"And what about clothes?" I asked. "Oh," replied my hostess airily, "I
go in whatever clothes I like. There are astral counterparts to all our
garments. It by no means follows that I appear in the same dress as t