between man and woman. The sun was getting low and it was shadowy in
those shrouded hollows. I laughed at some thought, I forget what, and
then began to badger her with questions. I tried to exhaust the
possibilities of the Dimensionist idea, made grotesque suggestions. I
said: "And when a great many of you have been crowded out of the
Dimension and invaded the earth you will do so and so--" something
preposterous and ironical. She coldly dissented, and at once the irony
appeared as gross as the jocularity of a commercial traveller. Sometimes
she signified: "Yes, that is what we shall do;" signified it without
speaking--by some gesture perhaps, I hardly know what. There was
something impressive--something almost regal--in this manner of hers; it
was rather frightening in those lonely places, which were so forgotten,
so gray, so closed in. There was something of the past world about the
hanging woods, the little veils of unmoving mist--as if time did not
exist in those furrows of the great world; and one was so absolutely
alone; anything might have happened. I grew weary of the sound of my
tongue. But when I wanted to cease, I found she had on me the effect of
some incredible stimulant.

We came to the end of the valley where the road begins to climb the
southern hill, out into the open air. I managed to maintain an uneasy
silence. From her grimly dispassionate reiterations I had attained to a
clear idea, even to a visualisation, of her fantastic conception--allegory,
madness, or whatever it was. She certainly forced it home. The
Dimensionists were to come in swarms, to materialise, to devour like
locusts, to be all the more irresistible because indistinguishable. They
were to come like snow in the night: in the morning one would look out and
find the world white; they were to come as the gray hairs come, to sap the
strength of us as the years sap the strength of the muscles. As to methods,
we should be treated as we ourselves treat the inferior races. There would