He passed it fleetingly and tried to feel for it again, but it eluded him like the other card with an apple on it in Pelmanism. He felt a spasm of excitement because he knew instinctively who it was, or at least knew who it was he wanted it to be, and once you know what it is you want to be true, instinct is a very useful device for enabling you to know that it is.
He instinctively knew that it was Fenny and that he wanted to find her; but he could not. By straining too much for it, he could feel he was losing this strange new faculty, so he relaxed the search and let his mind wander more easily once more.
And again, he felt the fracture.
Again he couldn’t find it. This time, whatever his instinct was busy telling him it was all right to believe, he wasn’t certain that it was Fenny or perhaps it was a different fracture this time. It had the same disjointed quality but it seemed a more general feeling of fracture, deeper, not a single mind, maybe not a mind at all. It was different.
He let his mind sink slowly and widely into the Earth, rippling, seeping, sinking.
He was following the Earth through its days, drifting with the rhythms of its myriad pulses, seeping through the webs of its life, swelling with its tides, turning with its weight. Always the fracture kept returning, a dull disjointed distant ache.
And now he was flying through a land of light; the light was time, the tides of it were days receding. The fracture he had sensed, the second fracture, lay in the distance before him across the land, the thickness of a single hair across the dreaming landscape of the days of Earth.
And suddenly he was upon it.
He danced dizzily over the edge as the dreamland dropped sheer away beneath him, a stupefying precipice into nothing, him wildly twisting, clawing at nothing, flailing in horrifying space, spinning, falling.
Across the jagged chasm had been another land, another time, an older world, not fractured from, but hardly joined: two Earths. He woke.
A cold breeze brushed the feverish sweat standing on his forehead. The nightmare was spent and so, he felt, was he. His shoulders dropped, he gently rubbed his eyes with the tips of his fingers. At last he was sleepy as well as very tired. As to what it meant, if it meant anything at all, he would think about it in the morning; for now he would go to bed and sleep. His own bed, his own sleep.
He could see his house in the distance and wondered why this was. It was silhouetted against the moonlight and he recognized its rather dull blockish shape. He looked about him and noticed that he was about eighteen inches above the rose bushes of one of his neighbours, John Ainsworth. His rose bushes were carefully tended, pruned back for the winter, strapped to canes and labelled, and Arthur wondered what he was doing above them. He wondered what was holding him there, and when he discovered that nothing was holding him there he crashed awkwardly to the ground. He picked himself up, brushed himself down and hobbled back to his house on a sprained ankle. He undressed and toppled into bed.
While he was asleep the phone rang again. It rang for fully fifteen minutes and caused him to turn over twice. It never, however, stood a chance of waking him up.
他很快地经过了它，试图再感受一次，但它就像配尔曼式记忆训练法（注二）中的另一张苹果卡片一样闪了过去。他感到一阵兴奋的痉挛，因为他本能地知道那是谁，或者至少是知道自己希望那是谁，而且一旦你知道了那个心灵是什么，你就会希望那是真的。本能是一种很有用的装置，可以让你知道那个心灵是什么。
他本能地知道那个心灵是芬妮，而且他想找到她。可是他没有辙。他耗费了太多精力，已经可以感到自己在逐渐失去这种奇异的新能力了。所以他暂缓了搜索，让心灵再一次更放松地漫游。
再一次，他感受到了那个断裂的心灵。
再一次，他又找不到那个心灵了。这次，尽管本能不停地向他唠叨相信本能没坏处，但他不敢确定那就是芬妮——或许这是另外一个断裂的心灵。它同样有那种脱节的感觉，但断裂的感觉似乎更加广泛，更加深刻，那不是一个单独的心灵，可能根本就不是个心灵。它不一样。
他让心灵慢慢地大面积沉入地球，溅跃，渗透，下沉。
他跟踪着地球的天数，漂流在地球无数的脉动节奏中，渗透在生命的网络中，与潮汐一同上涨，与重力一同转动。断裂的心灵不停的回归，那是个迟钝破碎遥远的痛。
现在他正飞过一片充满光亮的大地；光亮代表时间，那些浪潮是缩减的天数。在他穿越那片梦幻的风景前，他感受到的那第二个断裂心灵，就在不远处。
突然间，他已经在它上方了。
他在边缘头晕眼花地上下跳动，那片梦幻之地在他下方逐渐远离。他在虚空中麻木，扭曲，抓爬，在一片恐怖的空间中摇摆，旋转，坠落。
穿过凹凸不平的裂口，呈现在眼前的是另一片大地，另一个时间，一个更加古老的世界，不是割裂的，但也几乎没有连结：那是两个地球。他醒了。
一阵冷风扫过他前额狂热的汗水。噩梦过去了，他感到，他就是他。他的肩膀松弛下来，他轻轻地用指尖擦着双眼。最后他又累又困。至于这些意味着什么，如果真的意味着什么的话，他打算早上再琢磨；至于现在，他要上床睡觉。他自己的床，自己的觉。
他可以看到自己的房子在远处。他琢磨着这到底是怎么一回事。那是月光下的侧影，可以辨认出房子那模糊生硬的形状。他看着自己，发现自己正飘在邻居约翰.安斯沃斯的玫瑰丛上方十八英尺处。他的玫瑰丛被精心护理过，在冬天修剪过，枝条被绳子系住并挂上了标签。而阿瑟却在疑惑自己在玫瑰丛上干什么。他疑惑着到底是什么东西在撑着他，当发现什么都没有时，他跌了下去。他爬起来，掸了掸土，一瘸一拐地走回房子。他脱下衣服，倒在了床上。
他睡得正香的时候电话又响了。它响了整整十五分钟，让他翻了两次身。然而，这根本不可能吵醒他了。