At the hotel Livingston called for a private dining room, and after the coffee was served, he said:

“Tell me, Briggs, what is the link between you and your patient? There is a link, I am sure. Her words while in the trance made a great impression upon me.”

There was a pause before Reuel replied in a low tone, as he rested his arm on the opposite side of the table and propped his head up on his hand:

“Forgive me, Aubrey!”

“For what?”

“This playing with your confidence. I have not been entirely frank with you.”

“Oh, well! You are not bound to tell me everything you know. You surely have the right to silence about your affairs, if you think best.”

“Listen, Aubrey. I should like to tell you all about it. I would feel better. What you say is true; there is a link; but I never saw her in the flesh before that night at the Temple. With all our knowledge, Aubrey, we are but barbarians in our ideas of the beginning, interim and end of our creation. Why were we created? For whose benefit? Can anyone answer that satisfactorily?”

“‘Few things are hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and seriously to the solution of a mystery,’7 Hawthorne tells us,” replied Aubrey. “Have not you proved this, Reuel?”

“Well, yes—or, we prove rather, that our solution but deepens the mystery or mysteries. I have surely proved the last. Aubrey, I look natural, don’t I? There is nothing about me that seems wrong?”

“Wrong! No.”

“Well, if I tell you the truth you will call me a lunatic. You have heard of people being haunted by hallucinations?”

Aubrey nodded. “I am one of those persons. Seven weeks ago I saw Dianthe first, but not in the flesh. Hallow-eve I spoke to her in the garden of the haunted house, but not in the flesh. I thought it strange to be sure, that this face should lurk in my mind so much of the time; but I never dreamed what a crisis it was leading up to. The French and German schools of philosophy have taught us that going to places and familiar passages in books, of which we have had no previous knowledge, is but a proof of Plato’s doctrine—the soul’s transmigration, and reflections from the invisible world surrounding us.

“Finally a mad desire seized me to find that face a living reality that I might love and worship it. Then I saw her at the Temple—I found her at the hospital—in the flesh! My desire was realized.”

“And having found her, what then?” He waited breathlessly for the reply.

“I am mightily pleased and satisfied. I will cure her. She is charming; and if it is insanity to be in love with her, I don’t care to be sane.”