"Any callers, Nevins?"
"Mr. Moncreith, sir, looked in, but left no word. And the postman."
"No duns, Nevins?"
"Not in person, sir."
"Dear me! Is my position on the wane? When a man is no longer dunned his credit is either too good or too bad; or else his social position is declining." He picked up the tray with the letters, ran his eye over them quickly, and said, "Thank the stars; they still dun me by post. There should be a law against it; yet it is as sweet to one's vanity as an angry letter from a woman. Nevins, is the day dull or garish?"
"It's what I should call bright, sir."
"Then you may lay out some gloomy clothes for me. I would not add to the heat wittingly. And, Nevins!"
"Yes sir."
"If anyone calls before I breakfast, unless it happens to be Professor Vanlief,—Vanlief, Nevins, of the Vanliefs of New Amsterdam—say I am indisposed."
He dressed himself leisurely, thinking of the wonderful adventures into living that lay before him. He rehearsed the simple instructions that Vanlief had given him the night before. It was all utterly simple. As one looked into the mirror, the spirit of that one lay on the surface, waiting for the next person that glanced that way. There followed a complete exodus of the spirit from the one body into the other. The recipient was himself plus the soul of the other. The exodus left that other in a state something like physical collapse. There would be, for the recipient of the new personality, a sense of double consciousness; the mind would be like a palimpsest, the one will and the one habit imposed upon the other. The fact that the person whose spirit passed from him upon the magic mirror was left more or less a wreck was cause for using the experiment charily, as the Professor took pains to warn Orson. There was a certain risk. The mirror might be broken; one could never tell. It would be better to pick one's subjects wisely, always with a definite purpose. This man might be used to teach that side of life; that man another. It was not a thing to toy with. It was to be played with as little as human life itself. Vivisection was a pastime to this; this implicated the spirit, the other only the body.