The Hour of the Turning Night

Someone else had also lost consciousness of the body. Another mind, released for the moment from its earthly prison, sought communion with hers. Was this death, and had she wakened in another world? She moved her foot again, pressed her hand to the warm softness of her breast, felt her breath come and go, and even the steady beating of her heart. Not death, then, only a pause, in which for once the body, clamorous and imperious with its thousand needs, had given way to the soul.

The curious sense of another personality persisted. Was this other person dead, and striving mutely for expression? No, surely not, for this other mind was on the same plane as hers, subject to the same conditions. Not disembodied entirely, but only relaxed, as she was, this other personality had wakened and found itself gloriously free.

A New Self

A perception of fineness followed. Not everyone was capable of this, and the conviction brought a pleasant sense of superiority. Above the sordid world, in some higher realm of space and thought, they two had met, and saluted one another.

For the first time Edith thought of her body as something separate from herself, and in the light of a necessary--or unnecessary--evil. This new self neither hungered nor thirsted nor grew weary; it knew neither cold nor heat nor illness; pain, like a fourth dimension, was out of its comprehension, it required neither clothes nor means of transportation, it simply went, as the wind might, by its own power, when and where it chose.