"the veil was rent" for me also; and I was able to follow somewhat the
course of her musing and wandering spirit.

At the end of six months I heard her one day repeat some words which
were familiar to me. They were these: "Such were the arts by which the
Romans extended their conquests, and attained the palm of victory; and
the concurring testimony of different authors enables us to describe
them with precision..." I was startled: they are part of Gibbon's
"Decline and Fall," which I easily guessed that she had never read.

I said in a stern voice: "Where are you?"

She replied, "Us are in a room, eight hundred and eleven miles above. A
man is writing. Us are reading."

I may tell you two things: first, that in trance she never spoke of
herself as "I," nor even as "we," but, for some unknown reason, in the
_objective_ way, as "_us_": "us are," she would say--"us will," "us
went"; though, of course, she was an educated lady, and I don't think
ever lived in the West of England, where they say "us" in that way;
secondly, when wandering in the past, she always represented herself as
being "_above_" (the earth?), and higher the further back in time she
went; in describing present events she appears to have felt herself _on_
(the earth); while, as regards the future, she invariably declared that
"_us_" were so many miles "within" (the earth).

To her excursions in this last direction, however, there seemed to exist
certain fixed limits: I say seemed, for I cannot be sure, and only mean
that, in spite of my efforts, she never, in fact, went far in this
direction. Three, four thousand "miles" were common figures on her lips