“Number Three. Summerland. Bible book called it the third heaven. Plenty sense in Bible book, but people do not understand.”
“And the seventh heaven?”
“Ah! That is where the Christs are. All come there at last—you, me, everybody.”
“And after that?”
“Too much question, Mr. Mailey. Poor old Chang not know so much as that. Now good-bye! God bless you! I go.”
It was the end of the sitting of the rescue circle. A few minutes later Terbane was sitting up smiling and alert, but with no apparent recollection of anything which had occurred. He was pressed for time and lived afar, so that he had to make his departure, unpaid save by the blessing of those whom he had helped. Modest little unvenal man, where will he stand when we all find our real places in the order of creation upon the further side?
The circle did not break up at once. The visitors wanted to talk and the Maileys to listen.
“What I mean,” said Roxton, “it’s doosed interestin’ and all that, but there is a sort of variety-show element in it. What! Difficult to be sure it’s really real, if you take what I mean.”
“That is what I feel also,” said Malone. “Of course on its face value it is simply unspeakable. It is a thing so great that all ordinary happenings become commonplace. That I grant. But the human mind is very strange. I’ve read the case Moreton Prince examined, and Miss Beauchamp and the rest; also the results of Charcot, the great Nancy hypnotic school. They could turn a man into anything. The mind seems to be like a rope which can be unravelled into its various threads. Then each thread is a different personality which may take dramatic form, and act and speak as such. That man is honest, and he could not normally produce these effects. But how do we know that he is not self-hypnotised, and that under those conditions one strand of him becomes Mr. Chang and another becomes a sailor and another a society lady, and so forth?”
Mailey laughed. “Every man his own Cinquevalli,” said he, “but it is a rational objection and has to be met.”