s--and recalling conversations that had lasted the night through.
Just before the end of the London season they had walked the streets one
hot night after a party, discussing the various theories of the soul's
destiny. That afternoon they had met at the coffin of a college friend
whose mind had been a blank for the past three years. Some months
previously they had called at the asylum to see him. His expression had
been senile, his face imprinted with the record of debauchery. In death
the face was placid, intelligent, without ignoble lineation--the face of
the man they had known at college. Weigall and Gifford had had no time
to comment there, and the afternoon and evening were full; but, coming
forth from the house of festivity together, they had reverted almost at
once to the topic.

"I cherish the theory," Gifford had said, "that the soul sometimes
lingers in the body after death. During madness, of course, it is an
impotent prisoner, albeit a conscious one. Fancy its agony, and its
horror! What more natural than that, when the life-spark goes out, the
tortured soul should take possession of the vacant skull and triumph
once more for a few hours while old friends look their last? It has had
time to repent while compelled to crouch and behold the result of its
work, and it has shrived itself into a state of comparative purity. If I
had my way, I should stay inside my bones until the coffin had gone into
its niche, that I might obviate for my poor old comrade the tragic
impersonality of death. And I should like to see justice done to it, as
it were--to see it lowered among its ancestors with the ceremony and
solemnity that are its due. I am afraid that if I dissevered myself too
quickly, I should yield to curiosity and hasten to investigate the
mysteries of space."

"You believe in the soul as an independent entity, then---that it and
the vital principle are not one and the same?"

"Absolutely. The body and soul are twins, life comrades--sometimes
friends, sometimes enemies, but always loyal in the last instance. Some
day, when I am tired of the world, I shall go to India and become a
mahatma, solely for the pleasure of receiving proof during life of this
independent relationship."

"Suppose you were not sealed up properly, and returned after one of your
astral flights to find your earthly part unfit for habitation? It is an
experiment I don't think I should care to try, unless even juggling with
soul and flesh ha