nt for a marked space. Then he asked, smiling: "Well,
why not?"

"Why not what?"

"Tell your wife."

"How, my wife?"

"By marriage."

Alford looked dazed. "Do you mean Mrs. Yarrow?"

"If that's her name, and she's a widow."

"And do you think it would be the fair thing for a man on the verge of
insanity--a physical and mental wreck--to ask a woman to marry him?"

"In your case, yes. In the first place, you're not so bad as all that.
You need nothing but rest for your body and change for your mind. I
believe you'll get rid of your illusions as soon as you form the habit
of speaking of them promptly when they begin to trouble you. You ought
to speak of them to some one. You can't always have me around, and Mrs.
Yarrow would be the next best thing."

"She's rich, and you know what I am. I'll have to borrow the money to
rest on, I'm so poor."

"Not if you marry it."

Alford rose, somewhat more vigorously than he had sat down. But that day
he did not go beyond ascertaining that Mrs. Yarrow was in town. He found
out the fact from the maid at her door, who said that she was nearly
always at home after dinner, and, without waiting for the evening of
another day, Alford went to call upon her.

She said, coming down to him in a rather old-fashioned, impersonal
drawing-room which looked distinctly as if it had been left to her: "I
was so glad to get your card. When did you leave Woodbeach?"

"Mrs. Yarrow," he returned, as if that were the answer, "I think I owe
you an explanation."

"Pay it!" she bantered, putting out her hand.

"I'm so poverty-stricken that I don't know whether I can. Did you ever
notice anything odd about me?"

His directness seemed to have a right to directness from her. "I noticed
that you stared a good deal--or used to. But people _do_ stare."

"I stared because I saw things."

"Saw things?"

"I saw whatever I thought of. Whatever came into my mind was externated
in a vision."

She smiled, he could not make out whether uneasily or not. "It sounds
rather creepy, doesn't it? But it's very interesting."

"That's what the doctor said; I've been to see him this morning. May I
tell you about my visions? They're not so creepy as they sound, I
believe, and I don't think they'll keep you awake."

"Yes, do," she said. "I should like of all things to hear about them.
Perhaps I've been one of them."

"You have."

"Oh! Isn't that rather personal?"

"I hope not offensively."

He went on