ad turned back again to a child's
simplicity."

"That was Lao Tze," Colonel Hampton said, a little surprised. "Don't
tell me you've been around that long."

"Oh, but I have! Longer than that; oh, for very long." And yet the voice
he seemed to be hearing was the voice of a young girl. "You don't mind
my coming to talk to you?" it continued. "I get so lonely, so dreadfully
lonely, you see."

"Urmh! So do I," Colonel Hampton admitted. "I'm probably going bats, but
what the hell? It's a nice way to go bats, I'll say that.... Stick
around; whoever you are, and let's get acquainted. I sort of like you."

A feeling of warmth suffused him, as though he had been hugged by
someone young and happy and loving.

"Oh, I'm glad. I like you, too; you're nice!"

* * * * *

"Yes, of course." Doctor Vehrner nodded sagely. "That is a schizoid
tendency; the flight from reality into a dream-world peopled by
creatures of the imagination. You understand, there is usually a mixture
of psychotic conditions, in cases like this. We will say that this case
begins with simple senile dementia--physical brain degeneration, a
result of advanced age. Then the paranoid symptoms appear; he imagines
himself surrounded by envious enemies, who are conspiring against him.
The patient then withdraws into himself, and in his self-imposed
isolation, he conjures up imaginary companionship. I have no doubt...."

In the beginning, he had suspected that this unseen visitor was no more
than a figment of his own lonely imagination, but as the days passed,
this suspicion vanished. Whatever this entity might be, an entity it
was, entirely distinct from his own conscious or subconscious mind.

At first she--he had early come to think of the being as feminine--had
seemed timid, fearful lest her intrusions into his mind prove a
nuisance. It took some time for him to assure her that she was always
welcome. With time, too, his impression of her grew stronger and more
concrete. He found that he was able to visualize her, as he might
visualize something remembered, or conceived of in imagination--a lovely
young girl, slender and clothed in something loose and filmy, with
flowers in her honey-colored hair, and clear blue eyes, a pert, cheerful
face, a wide, smiling mouth and an impudently up-tilted nose. He
realized that this image was merely a sort of allegorical
representation, his own private object-abstraction from a reality which
h