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that on one occasion at least one of these inhabitants of this other
world had looked into Mr. Cave's face while he was making these
observations.
So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we
dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to
believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two
worlds at once, and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained
stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it
had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar
crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of
the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an
observer in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and vice
versa. At present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two
crystals could so come en rapport, but nowadays we know enough to
understand that the thing is not altogether impossible. This view of the
crystals as en rapport was the supposition that occurred to Mr. Wace,
and to me at least it seems extremely plausible....
And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of
Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened
rapidly--there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars
shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in
the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades,
Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the
solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of
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