His writing pad fell into the lily pond, but he did not notice it.

He needed several people for his experiment—the more the better, for he wanted a variety of temperaments, and he said something, too, about the advantage of a communal psychical effort . . . But they must be the right kind of people—people with highly developed nervous systems—not men too deeply sunk in matter. (I thought of Evelyn and the Lamingtons and old Folliot.) He deprecated exuberant physical health or abounding vitality, since such endowments meant that their possessors would be padlocked to the narrower sensory world. He ran over his selection again, dwelling on each, summing each up with what seemed to me astounding shrewdness, considering that he had met them for the first time two days before. He wanted the hungry and the forward-looking. Tavanger and Mayot. “They will never be content,” he said, “and their hunger is of the spirit, though maybe an earthy spirit . . .” Myself. He turned his hollow eyes on me, but was too polite to particularize what my kind of hunger might be . . . Charles Ottery. “He is unhappy, and that means that his hold on the present is loose . . .” Sally Flambard. “That gracious lady lives always sur la branche—is it not so? She is like a bird, and has no heavy flesh to clog her. Assuredly she must be one.” Rather to my surprise he added Reggie Daker. Reggie’s recent concussion, for some reason which I did not follow, made him a suitable object . . . Above all, there was Goodeve. He repeated his name with satisfaction, but offered no comment.

I asked him what form his experiment would take.

“A little training. No more. A little ascesis, partly of the body, but mainly of the mind. It must be disciplined to see what it shall see.”

Then, speaking very slowly, and drawing words apparently from as deep a cavern as that from which he drew his breath, he explained his plan.

There must be a certain physical preparation. I am as unlearned in medical science as in philosophy, but I gathered that recently there had been some remarkable advances made in the study of the brain and its subsidiary organs. Very likely I am writing nonsense, for the professor at this point forgot about tempering the wind to the shorn lamb, and poured forth a flood of technicalities.