The Great Stone of Sardis

by Frank R. Stockton

When Bryce turned and went back to Clewe, he too was pale.

“I do not wonder you fainted,” said he. “I do not believe it was what you saw that upset you; it was what you expected to see—wasn't that it?”

Clewe nodded in an indefinite way. “We won't talk about it now,” said he. “I don't want any more experiments to-day. We will cover up the instrument and go.”

When Roland Clewe reached his room, he sat down in the arm-chair to think. He had made a grand and wonderful success, but it was not upon that that his mind was now fixed. It was upon the casual and accidental effect of the work of his invention, of which he had never dreamed. Bryce had made a great mistake in thinking that it was not what Roland Clewe had seen, but what he had expected to see, which had caused him to drop insensible. It was what he had seen.

When the master-workman had approached the lighted space upon the ground, Clewe stood opposite to him, a little distance from the apparatus. As Bryce looked down, he leaned forward more and more, until the greater part of his body was directly over the lighted space. Looking at him, Clewe was startled, amazed, and horrified to find all that portion of his person which projected itself into the limits of the light had entirely disappeared, and that he was gazing upon a section of a man's trunk, brightly illuminated, and displayed in all its internal colors and outlines. Such a sight was enough to take away the senses of any man, and he did not wonder that he had fainted.

“Now,” said he to himself, “all the time that I was looking into that apparent hole, never thinking that in order to see down into it I was obliged to project a portion of myself into the line of the Artesian ray, that portion of me was transparent, invisible. If Bryce had come in! and then”—as the thought came into his mind his heart stopped beating—“if Margaret had been there!”

For an hour he sat in his chair, racking his brain.

“She must see the working of the ray,” he said. “I must tell her of my success. She must see it as soon as possible. It is cruel to keep her waiting. But how shall I manage it? How shall I shield her from the slightest possibility of what happened to me? Heavens!” he exclaimed, “if she had been there!”

After a time he determined that before any further experiments should take place he would build a circular screen, a little room, which should entirely surround the space on which the Artesian ray was operated. Only one person at a time should be allowed to enter this screened apartment, which should then be closed. It would make no difference if one should become invisible, provided there was no one else to know it.

It was on the evening of the next day that Margaret beheld the action of the Artesian ray. She greatly objected at first to going inside of the screened space by herself, and urged Roland to accompany her; but this he stoutly refused to do, assuring her that it was essential for but one person at a time to view the action of the ray. She demurred a good deal, but at last consented to allow herself to be shut up within the screen.