I was nearly frantic by this time.
"Geraldine," I said, "I am here. I did kiss you, really and truly, a moment ago."
But she paid no attention, and even while I was speaking kept up her little agonized appeal for me to come and help her. I rushed to the window, leaped out on the porch, jumped recklessly to the ground, dashed right into the arms of Mr. Holabird, ran through the streets to my own house, burst into the house, tore up the stairs to my room, and saw—what?
Myself, calmly and composedly lying back in the chair with Geraldine's letter in my hand! This was too awful; I sank down in the other chair, and as I did so my eyes fell upon the volume of the learned Archidechus. The mystery was solved! There in the other chair was my physical body, and in this one I sat, a disembodied spirit!
The explanation was so simple and evident it brought great relief to me. Everything was explained. Of course no looking-glass could reflect the spirit of a man, no one could feel him—or it—or hear him or see him; of course he could not open doors or strike people or lift anything, though, to be sure, no door could prove a barrier to such an ethereal, immaterial entity as a disembodied spirit.
That accounted for my finding myself in Geraldine's room in spite of the locked door, for the child sitting down on my lap, for the bisque head smiling at my buffet, for Geraldine's ignorance of my presence. As to the kiss—well, love was the highest and noblest sensation (love such as we felt for each other) and as nearly a spiritually ethereal feeling as any human one could be; so, when I had kissed her, her spiritual being had responded to mine. This explanation fell easily in with the rest.
So far as I was concerned, I was, to put it plainly and simply, only my feelings and sensations; I was a wandering sensation! Doubtless my spirit took the same form as my visible body, but it was a thing so utterly immaterial as to be absolutely invisible to the human eye. I could talk, walk, see, and hear, because I had all my sensations with me, the guiding essence of my brain, too; but really my voice, for instance, was not audible, because when I opened my spiritual mouth it was only with the sensation of speaking, and no real sound was made; or, to put another explanation before you, my voice had become refined in proportion with the rest of me, and was pitched in such a sound-wave as the human ear was not capable of receiving and concentrating.
At that moment this seemed very interesting to me, and I settled myself comfortably back in my chair and laughed long and loudly. Of course I could go back into my own body at any time, and matters would straighten themselves out at once. I sat speculatively contemplating my body. It was a dramatic moment, indeed!
My body was sitting in the chair in exactly the same position I had been when I left it, or rather, I should say, we had been when I left it. I bent over and touched it—or him?—he felt warm and natural, but not as if asleep. There was no beating of the heart, no rise or fall of the breast as in breathing, the eyes were opened and fixed but not glassy, the joints appeared to be flexible still, though, of course, I could not have moved one to see—in short, my body presented every appearance of suspended animation. I resolved not to try to get back into it just at present, and was still sitting there speculating upon my double self when the door opened and my sister—the one who brought the letter—came in; she was my favorite, and we were great friends. She glanced at me, and, supposing I was asleep, drew a chair over to the window and waited for me to awaken.
The fire was burning brightly in the grate, and, as ill-luck would have it, a bright little coal sprang out and fell on my lap,—that is, the lap of my body. It seemed as if there was yet some sort of a connection between us, because while the coal burnt into the leg of my body, it was I who felt the sensation. I rushed over to myself and attempted to brush it off. Of course I could not. The pain was really unbearable, and, forgetting my state, I called to Mary, my sister; of course she did not hear me! This was a worse dilemma than before. I decided at once to resume my proper condition, when, horror of horrors! I found that I did not know how.