“You can put it that way if you like. Such a thought had never crossed my mind previously. He became hateful to me at once. I could not endure his presence. I would as soon think of embracing something cold and clammy, like a snake.” I did not point out that a snake is neither cold nor clammy. A nice young python, for instance, in his multi-colored spring suit, is as grateful and comforting to the touch as a roll of soft plush. But the antipathy of woman for the serpent is an old feud, harking back, I fancy, to the beginning of things. You ought to hear some of the queer tales about snakes current among the natives of India. Maggie brushed away the memory of the Armenian’s love-making with a gesture of disdain. “Gounod’s music set me a-dreaming,” she said. “If you indulge in composition there is no better jumping-off place than one of those delicious minor chords wherein the motif flutters for a moment before it enters upon a new phase. I had run away ahead of the air when I experienced that pins-and-needles sensation I have spoken about----” “Were you cold?” I broke in. “Slightly. Not as one feels an icy draught of air, but rather the chilliness of sitting motionless in a cold room. Instead of the music I heard a telephone bell. Constantine’s voice answered. There was a pause, and some one, Steindal I expect, told him that Karl Grier was with me in London, and that I was unwilling to sign the contract offered by Bocci. Constantine’s exclamations made me understand so much. There was more ringing, and I distinctly heard Constantine reserving a cabin on a steamer which sails on Saturday. Then he appeared to give way to a fit of passion. He used horrid words, and he vowed to stab Karl through and through. I actually heard the blows of his hand on the table, and he almost shrieked in his rage. Yet I thought there was fear in his voice, too. Oh, please tell me, do you think that this is all madness? I am afraid again, now, not of that man, but of myself!” Here was a bright and imaginative girl on the verge of hysteria owing to the startling exercise of a sense the existence of which neither she nor any one connected with her had even suspected a week earlier. To my thinking, the best way to calm her natural fears was to insist on the scientific accuracy of impressions which might otherwise be regarded as dangerous delusions. So I took her, with the preciseness of a road-surveyor, along the strange path already traversed by Karl, and took care to prove that the human machine, so far as hearing was concerned, only acted more speedily and over greater distances than its iron and copper imitators. Its limits were exactly the same.