is senses could never picture as it existed.

It was about this time that he had begun to call her Dearest. She had
given him no name, and seemed quite satisfied with that one.

"I've been thinking," she said, "I ought to have a name for you, too. Do
you mind if I call you Popsy?"

"Huh?" He had been really startled at that. If he needed any further
proof of Dearest's independent existence, that was it. Never, in the
uttermost depths of his subconscious, would he have been likely to label
himself Popsy. "Know what they used to call me in the Army?" he asked.
"Slaughterhouse Hampton. They claimed I needed a truckload of sawdust to
follow me around and cover up the blood." He chuckled. "Nobody but you
would think of calling me Popsy."

There was a price, he found, that he must pay for Dearest's
companionship--the price of eternal vigilance. He found that he was
acquiring the habit of opening doors and then needlessly standing aside
to allow her to precede him. And, although she insisted that he need not
speak aloud to her, that she could understand any thought which he
directed to her, he could not help actually pronouncing the words, if
only in a faint whisper. He was glad that he had learned, before the end
of his plebe year at West Point, to speak without moving his lips.

Besides himself and the kitten, Smokeball, there was one other at
"Greyrock" who was aware, if only faintly, of Dearest's presence. That
was old Sergeant Williamson, the Colonel's Negro servant, a retired
first sergeant from the regiment he had last commanded. With increasing
frequency, he would notice the old Negro pause in his work, as though
trying to identify something too subtle for his senses, and then shake
his head in bewilderment.

One afternoon in early October--just about a year ago--he had been
reclining in a chair on the west veranda, smoking a cigar and trying to
re-create, for his companion, a mental picture of an Indian camp as he
had seen it in Wyoming in the middle '90's, when Sergeant Williamson
came out from the house, carrying a pair of the Colonel's field-boots
and a polishing-kit. Unaware of the Colonel's presence, he set down his
burden, squatted on the floor and began polishing the boots, humming
softly to himself. Then he must have caught a whiff of the Colonel's
cigar. Raising his head, he saw the Colonel, and made as though to pick
up the boots and polishing equipment.

"Oh, that's all right, Sergeant," the Colonel