It is all very mysterious.

I certainly hope that Annie won't find these things here in the morning when she comes to clear up.

I wonder what the Museum would give me for them if they were not, as I think they are, the unsubstantial fabric of a vision ?" When he got into his room and turned the electric light on, he stood under the cluster and held up his closed hand so that the light fell upon a curiously engraved scarab set in a heavy gold ring which had been given to him on his last birthday by Lord Lester Leighton, a wealthy and accomplished young nobleman who had devoted his learned leisure to Egyptian exploration and research.

It was he who had sent the Mummy of Queen Nitocris to the house on Wimbledon Common instead of adding it to his own collection--not altogether unselfishly, it must be confessed, for he was very much in love with the other Nitocris who was still in the flesh.
"Now," he said, fingering the scarab, "if I was not dreaming, and if by some mysterious means Her Highness's promise is to be actually fulfilled, I ought to be able to take this ring off without opening my hand.

Certainly, any fourth dimensional being could do it." As he spoke he pulled at the setting of the scarab--and, to his amazement, the ring came off whole.