the door,
and another five to get back to the chair again. The laughter, too, kept
bubbling up inside me--great wholesome laughter that shook me like gusts
of wind--so that even my terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell
you, Dr. Silence, it was altogether vile, that mixture of fear and
laughter, altogether vile!

"Then, all at once, the things in the room again presented their funny
side to me and set me off laughing more furiously than ever. The
bookcase was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown, the way the clock
looked at me on the mantelpiece too comic for words; the arrangement of
papers and inkstand on the desk tickled me till I roared and shook and
held my sides and the tears streamed down my cheeks. And that footstool!
Oh, that absurd footstool!"

He lay back in his chair, laughing to himself and holding up his hands
at the thought of it, and at the sight of him Dr. Silence laughed too.

"Go on, please," he said, "I quite understand. I know something myself
of the hashish laughter."

The author pulled himself together and resumed, his face growing quickly
grave again.

"So, you see, side by side with this extravagant, apparently causeless
merriment, there was also an extravagant, apparently causeless, terror.
The drug produced the laughter, I knew; but what brought in the terror I
could not imagine. Everywhere behind the fun lay the fear. It was terror
masked by cap and bells; and I became the playground for two opposing
emotions, armed and fighting to the death. Gradually, then, the
impression grew in me that this fear was caused by the invasion--so you
called it just now--of the 'person' who had wakened me; she was utterly
evil; inimical to my soul, or at least to all in me that wished for
good. There I stood, sweating and trembling, laughing at everything in
the room, yet all the while with this white terror mastering my heart.
And this creature was putting--putting her--"

He hesitated again, using his handkerchief freely.

"Putting what?"

"--putting ideas into my mind," he went on, glancing nervously about the
room. "Actually tapping my thought-stream so as to switch off the usual
current and inject her own. How mad that sounds! I know it, but it's
true. It's the only way I can express it. Moreover, while the operation
terrified me, the skill with which it was accomplished filled me afresh
with laughter at the clumsiness of men by comparison. Our ignorant,
bungling methods of teaching