as though they had caught that blasting shade in
hers. From gossip about the Mountain House, later from her own
admission, he knew who "Aunt Paula" was--"a spirit medium, or
something," said the gossip; "a great teacher of a new philosophy,"
said Annette Markham.

Dr. Blake, partly because adventure had kept him over-young, held still
his basic, youthful ideas about the proper environment for woman.
Whenever the name "Aunt Paula," softened with the accents of affection,
proceeded from that low, contralto voice, it hurt the new thing,
greater than any conventional idea, which was growing up in him. He
even suspected, at such times, what might be the "something nobler than
nursing."

A big apple tree shaded the sidelines of the Mountain House tennis
court. A bench fringed its trunk. Annette threw herself down, back
against the bark. It was late afternoon. The other house-guests droned
over bridge on the piazzas or walked in the far woods; they were alone
out-of-doors. And Annette, always, until now, so chary of confidences,
developed the true patient's weakness and began to talk symptoms.

"It is curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she
said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still have
attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on
and so can she. You know we've been together so much that it's
like--like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we
can almost touch. She knows it often before I do. She makes me go to
bed early; often she puts me to sleep holding my hand, as she used to
do when I was a little girl. But even sleep doesn't much help. I come
out of it with a kind of fright and heaviness. I have little memories
of curious dreams and a queer sense, too, that I mustn't remember what
I've dreamed. I grow tired and heavy--I can always see it in my face.
Then Aunt Paula sends me away, and I become all right again--as I am
now."

Blake did not express the impatient thought of his mind. He only said:

"A little sluggishness of the blood and a little congestion of the
brain. I had such sleep once after I'd done too much work and fought
too much heat in the Cavite Hospital. Only with me it took the form of
nightmare--mostly, I was in process of being boloed."

"Yes, perhaps it was that"--her eyes deepened to their most faraway
blue--"and perhaps it is something else. I think it may be. Aunt Paula
thinks so, too, though she never sa