intruding--has it been noticed?'

Lawford hesitated. 'Oh, yes,' he said slowly, 'it has been
noticed--my wife, a few friends.'

'Do you mind this infernal clatter?' said Herbert, laying his
fingers on the open casement.

'No, no. And you think?'

'My dear fellow, I don't think anything. It's all the craziest
conjecture. Stranger things even than this have happened. There
are dozens here--in print. What are we human beings after all?
Clay in the hands of the potter. Our bodies are merely an
inheritance, packed tight and corded up. We have practically no
control over their main functions. We can't even replace a little
finger-nail. And look at the faces of us--what atrocious
mockeries most of them are of any kind of image! But we know our
bodies change--age, sickness, thought, passion, fatality. It
proves they are amazingly plastic. And merely even as a theory it
is not in the least untenable that by force of some violent
convulsive effort from outside one's body might change. It
answers with odd voluntariness to friend or foe, smile or snarl.
As for what we call the laws of Nature, they are pure assumptions
to-day, and may be nothing better than scrap-iron tomorrow. Good
Heavens, Lawford, consider man's abysmal impudence.' He smoked on
in silence for a moment. 'You say you fell asleep down there?'

Lawford nodded. Herbert tapped his cigarette on the sill. 'Just
following up our ludicrous conjecture, you know,' he remarked