The medium smiled.
"That is fortunate," he said. "It's being run to death just now.... Well, I'll put it in an untechnical way. There is a part of us, is there not, that lies below our ordinary waking thoughts—that part of us in which our dreams reside, our habits take shape, our instincts, intuitions, and all the rest, are generated. Well, in ordinary dreams, when we are asleep, it is this part that is active. The pot boils, so to speak, all by itself, uncontrolled by reason. A madman is a man in whom this part is supreme in his waking life as well. Well, it is through this part of us that we communicate with the spiritual world. There are, let us say, two doors in it—that which leads up to our senses, through which come down our waking experiences to be stored up; and—and the other door...."
"Yes?"
The medium hesitated.
"Well," he said, "in some natures—yours, for instance, Mr. Baxter—this door opens rather easily. It was through that door that you went, I think, in what you call your 'dream.' You yourself said it was quite unlike ordinary dreams."
"Yes."
"And I am the more sure that this is so, since your experience is exactly that of so many others under the same circumstances."
Laurie moved uncomfortably in his chair.
"I don't quite understand," he said sharply. "You mean it was not a dream?"
"Certainly not. At least, not a dream in the ordinary sense. It was an actual experience."