hat the head waiter came
up and whispered something in his ear, and that he glanced round and saw
the other people were looking at him curiously, some of them laughing,
and that his companion then got up and led the way out of the
restaurant.

They walked hurriedly through the streets, neither of them speaking; and
Jones was so intent upon getting back the whole history of the affair
from the region of deep sleep, that he barely noticed the way they took.
Yet it was clear he knew where they were bound for just as well as his
companion, for he crossed the streets often ahead of him, diving down
alleys without hesitation, and the other followed always without
correction.

The pavements were very full, and the usual night crowds of London were
surging to and fro in the glare of the shop lights, but somehow no one
impeded their rapid movements, and they seemed to pass through the
people as if they were smoke. And, as they went, the pedestrians and
traffic grew less and less, and they soon passed the Mansion House and
the deserted space in front of the Royal Exchange, and so on down
Fenchurch Street and within sight of the Tower of London, rising dim and
shadowy in the smoky air.

Jones remembered all this perfectly well, and thought it was his intense
preoccupation that made the distance seem so short. But it was when the
Tower was left behind and they turned northwards that he began to notice
how altered everything was, and saw that they were in a neighbourhood
where houses were suddenly scarce, and lanes and fields beginning,
and that their only light was the stars overhead. And, as the deeper
consciousness more and more asserted itself to the exclusion of the
surface happenings of his mere body during the day, the sense of
exhaustion vanished, and he realised that he was moving somewhere in the
region of causes behind the veil, beyond the gross deceptions of the
senses, and released from the clumsy spell of space and time.

Without great surprise, therefore, he turned and saw that his companion
had altered, had shed his overcoat and black hat, and was moving beside
him absolutely _without sound_. For a brief second he saw him, tall as a
tree, extending through space like a great shadow, misty and wavering of
outline, followed by a sound like wings in the darkness; but, when he
stopped, fear clutching at his heart, the other resumed his former
proportions, and Jones could plainly see his normal outline against the
gr