entering closed rooms, even as your Lordship entered
mine, without the opening of doors or windows, and appearing and
vanishing at will? On the reply to this question I am ready to stake
everything. Deny it, and I am henceforth silent. Only vouchsafe an
answer.

Sphere (AFTER A PAUSE). It is reported so. But men are divided in
opinion as to the facts. And even granting the facts, they explain
them in different ways. And in any case, however great may be the
number of different explanations, no one has adopted or suggested the
theory of a Fourth Dimension. Therefore, pray have done with this
trifling, and let us return to business.

I. I was certain of it. I was certain that my anticipations would be
fulfilled. And now have patience with me and answer me yet one more
question, best of Teachers! Those who have thus appeared--no one knows
whence--and have returned--no one knows whither--have they also
contracted their sections and vanished somehow into that more Spacious
Space, whither I now entreat you to conduct me?

Sphere (MOODILY). They have vanished, certainly--if they ever
appeared. But most people say that these visions arose from the
thought--you will not understand me--from the brain; from the perturbed
angularity of the Seer.

I. Say they so? Oh, believe them not. Or if it indeed be so, that
this other Space is really Thoughtland, then take me to that blessed
Region where I in Thought shall see the insides of all solid things.
There, before my ravished eye, a Cube moving in some altogether new
direction, but strictly according to Analogy, so as to make every
particle of his interior pass through a new kind of Space, with a wake
of its own--shall create a still more perfect perfection than himself,
with sixteen terminal Extra-solid angles, and Eight solid Cubes for his
Perimeter. And once there, shall we stay our upward course? In that
blessed region of Four Dimensions, shall we linger at the threshold of
the Fifth, and not enter therein? Ah, no! Let us rather resolve that
our ambition shall soar with our corporal ascent. Then, yielding to
our intellectual onset, the gates of the Six Dimension shall fly open;
after that a Seventh, and then an Eighth--

How long I should have continued I know not. In vain did the Sphere,
in his voice of thunder, reiterate his command of silence, and threaten
me with the direst penalties if I persisted. Nothing could stem the
flood of my ecstatic aspi