He went into one of the empty visiting rooms off the hall, walked over to the window, and went right through. There he was, bobbing up and down like a balloon, only in the air three stories above the ground. “I must be out of my mind, not out of my body,” Lydia thought with a pang of panic. “They’re right. I’m just senile, quite mad.” The sight of Cromwell lolling out there enraged her.

“What the hell is it now?” he asked, and impossibly he was beside her again.

Lydia pulled herself up to some semblance of dignity. “Old men don’t go strolling through the sky in the middle of the afternoon,” she began.

“Would you like it better if I was a young fella?” he said stiffly. “What’s bugging you more: looking funny, making an ass of yourself, or are you just plain scared?”

She’d hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry. Really I am, and I guess I’m scared. I just can’t do it, just step out like that through a window three stories up—”

“Okay. Go back to your body,” Cromwell said. “I thought you had some guts. They said you raised Cain right up to the last, but I guess that’s all left you now. Be like some of them others if you want, afraid to get out even when they know they can.”

“Besides being a crazy old coot, you’re a cruel one,” Lydia said. “And you’re a stubborn old idiot,” he said, grinning.

She looked out, debating. Suppose she fell and died? Then the humor of it hit her. Everything was so outlandish that the word death didn’t really mean much any more. How could it when her body was all folded up by itself in the other room, while she was here? At her age, what the hell did she have to lose?

Lydia almost gave Cromwell a coquettish smile. “I might as well die trying to fly as any other way. It’s better than being drugged to death,” she said.

“Now!” he shouted. He floated up several feet and just walked through the window; the glass just seemed to part to let him through, though at any time Lydia expected to hear the whole thing crash into pieces. She kept her eyes on him, rose, approached the window, put her hands out, closed her eyes tight then—and went through! Hardly believing, she found herself looking down at the yard. Below sat other old people, in less advanced stages of senility, those still allowed outside privileges. How she used to envy them! “Cromwell, I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” she shouted. She felt free and weightless as the air itself. Already the two of them were moving away so that the building itself became a blur.