The fence offered a real support, for the iron frame about its top became a narrow but strong rest for my feet. But the fence was not particularly high, and as I progressed the earth, owing to the inequalities of the ground, often was only a few inches above my head. Anyone stopping to look would have seen a man—a madman, as he would have supposed—standing on his head against the iron fence, and occasionally moving forward by convulsive movements of his rigid arms.
The traffic had thinned, and there seemed to be few pedestrians on my side of the thoroughfare. A wild idea seized me—to negotiate the distance to your home, Haswell, clinging to the fences along the way. I thought it could be done, and you were the only person to whom I felt I could tell my strange story with a hope of belief.
Had I attempted the journey, I should have been lost without a doubt; somewhere along the way my arm sockets would have rebelled, my grasp would have torn away, and I would have been plunged into the depths of a star-strewn space and become a wanderer in the void speeding toward an unimagined destiny. As it happened, this was not to be.
I had reached the end of the side fence, and was just beginning to make my way around to the front, when I was seen by a woman—a young woman, who came along the street at that moment. I knew nothing of her presence until her muffled scream reached my ears. Seeing me standing apparently on my head, she thought me a maniac.
To me she seemed a woman upside down, and I looked into her face as one looks into a reflection in the depths of a pool. A street lamp depended from the pavement above me and not far from my position of the moment, and in its light I saw that her face was young and sweet. I wonder, Haswell, if there can be any situation, however incredible, in which the face of a lovely woman will not command attention? I think not.
Well, it was a sweet face—and she did not scream again. I said to her: “Please do not be frightened. I am not crazy, although I do not wonder that you think so. Preposterous as it may seem, I am for the time being in a normal position; were I to stand upon the earth as you do, I would—”
I was going to say that I would vanish from her side, but I realized that this would be too much for her.
“I would be suffocated,” I finished. “The blood would rush to my head, and I would die.”
Then she spoke, and her voice was filled with tenderness. It was easy to understand that she believed me quite mad; but she did not fear me.
“You are ill,” she said. “You need assistance. May I not go for help? Is there not someone you would like summoned?”