And then a chill of awful loneliness struck him.

Although he could see and move and hear, and, no doubt, eat and drink in this world, he was unexistent as regards the inhabitants of it, and yet he knew perfectly well he was standing by the side of the road where the motor-car ought to be, and over there, a few hundred yards away, Niti would be sitting in her room or walking in the garden--and she wouldn't be born for nearly a thousand years yet.
It was certainly somewhat disquieting, this power of living in two existences and different ages, but it was a matter that would take some little time to get accustomed to.
The next instant the cavalcade and the forest had vanished, and there was the motor-car, just spinning past him.

He was on the Wimbledon Common of the twentieth century once more.

He stroked his clean-shaven chin with his finger and thumb, and walked slowly along the path by the side of the road, and then across the grass towards the flagstaff.
"I think I begin to see it now," he murmured.

"Of course, life, that is to say real, intellectual, or, as some would say, spiritual life, is, after all, the coefficient of that totally unexplainable thing called thought which enables us to explain most things except itself.