“My appointments have all been canceled. Surely you were told. I’ve been suspended. Someone’s made a complaint about me. I’m supposed to meet with the Medical Review Board in the Great Hall this afternoon. I have to defend my methods before a panel of three doctors.”

She looked at me with a confused expression. “It wasn’t me,” she said. “I have no complaints about your methods, professor.”

“I wasn’t suggesting it,” I said with a smile, “but I’m glad to hear it all the same.”

“My only complaint,” she continued hesitantly, “although it’s not a complaint at all really, is the one I expressed last time, while I was under hypnosis.”

I played dumb. “Remind me?”

“That if there is the possibility of passing over into another body, I wish to take it.”

I considered my predicament briefly before concluding I had nothing to gain by insisting on the pretense. “Madame, I must be honest with you. Something went wrong. You’re not supposed to remember that.”

“But I do. I remember everything about it. Most of all, I remember thinking, I don’t want to go back. I meant what I said, professor. I still do.”

I tried to reason with her. “I’m sorry, madame, I can’t accept your proposition. It would be a travesty. Do you really want to forsake your youth, health, and beauty to live the rest of your days in the body of a middle-aged bachelor?”

“I want to live someone else’s life. I don’t want to live mine. It’s too painful. Don’t you understand? When I look in the mirror, I look at myself with someone else’s eyes—the eyes of the man who loved me, the man I lost, the only man I will ever love. It is painful for me to look at myself. I cannot extinguish the love that is in me, and every time I see myself I am reminded of it. In order for me to be fully alive I need to leave this body—or I shall have to take my own life.”

“But you have so much to look forward to, so much still in front of you.”

“Do I? I’m a widow and an orphan. I’m penniless. I have only a basic education. What do you imagine I have to look forward to if love is out of the question? An empty marriage? Raising the children of a husband I don’t love? A convent? Praying to a god I don’t believe in?”

“You could be a nurse—you’re obviously very good at it.”