ought me
here. I know you can neither see nor hear me, but cannot your soul
commune with mine?"

"Is Dick here?" cried Sylvia, becoming deadly pale and getting up, "or
am I losing my reason?"

Seeing that she was distressed by the power of his mind, Ayrault once
more sank to the floor, burying his face in his hands.

Unable to endure this longer, and feeling as if his heart must break,
he rushed out into the street, wishing he might soothe his anguish with
a hypodermic injection of morphine, and that he had a body with which
to divert and suppress his soul.

Night had fallen, and the electric lamps cast their white rays on the
ground, while the stars overhead shone in their eternal serenity and
calm. Then was it once more brought home to him that he was a spirit,
for darkness and light were alike, and he felt the beginning of that
sense of prescience of which the bishop had spoken. Passing through
the houses of some of the clubs to which he belonged, he saw his name
still upon the list of members, and then he went to the places of
amusement he knew so well. On all sides were familiar faces, but what
interested him most was the great division incessantly going on. Here
were jolly people enjoying life and playing cards, who, his foresight
showed him, would in less than a year be under ground--like Mercutio,
in "Romeo and Juliet," to-day known as merry fellows, who to-morrow
would be grave men.

While his eyes beheld the sun, he had imagined the air felt warm and
balmy. He now saw that this had been a hallucination, for he was
chilled through and through. He also perceived that he cast no shadow,
and that no one observed his presence. He, on the other hand, saw not
only the air as it entered and left his friends' lungs, but also the
substance of their brains, and the seeds of disease and death, whose
presence they themselves did not even suspect, and the seventy-five per
cent of water in their bodies, making them appear like sacks of liquid.
In some he saw the germs of consumption; in others, affections of the
heart. In all, he saw the incessant struggle between the healthy
blood-cells and the malignant, omnipresent bacilli that the cells were
trying to overcome. Many men and women he saw were in love, and he
could tell what all were about to do. Oh, the secrets that were
revealed, while the motives for acts were now laid bare that till then
he had misunderstood! He had often heard the old saying, that if