ly for a moment began to waver in
my duties as a medical man. I began to think that, if, as it now
appears, two human beings, having never met in the body, are
nevertheless by some occult law of nature, permitted to hold communion
with each other in the spirit as lovers, what cruelty in me to try and
cut short their happy time of courtship! Would it not be kinder in me
(seeing that the order of their beings differs so from that of the rest
of the herd) to go against the common duties of my profession, and
instead of trying to remedy the malady, to accelerate it, till it
resulted in death.

"But no," I said to myself, immediately; "my reputation, my conscience.
What! _I_ a poisoner! No," I said; "we must all die some day, and my two
lover patients must hold out in this life a little longer. Death comes
soon enough for all, and then, if their spirit love was as lasting as it
appeared to be intense, they might resume their amours after this mortal
coil was doffed. What are a few paltry years compared with the
immeasurable gulf of eternity?" Thus I mused, but suddenly I said, "You
will not mind taking a little light physic, will you?"

"What! to make me well!" she exclaimed. "To imprison my spirit within
my body, as you have done Charles'. But stay, if I take your physic, it
will not be yet. I will wait to see if Charles is really lost to me for
ever. If he does not appear again all this week, then his spirit has no
longer power to wander from the body, and if he is lost to me, why
should I wander about in the spirit seeking him in vain? I might just as
well be cured as not."

"Very well," I said; "then, for the present it is needless to administer
any medicine?"

"Not at present, doctor," she said.

I took up my hat to go, and said that I would call again soon and would
bring her tidings of Charles; that I was going there straight from her.

"Stay, stay," she said. "You have told me nothing about him as yet."

"Well, my dear young lady," I said, "I really do not know what to tell
you about him. Like yourself, he refused to take my medicine, and----"

"What, he refused! Then how is it that he is getting well? That he does
not appear to me now? Doctor, you have had something administered on the
sly. I know it. I see it in your face;" and the look that she gave me
was so penetrating, that I quite quailed under it, and was obliged to
admit that I had.

"And you are going to try the same trick with me. Oh! oh!"

Her