“I’m not quibbling, Dickie,” she declared. “I mean just what I say. Captain Vanton is a ghost to me and that’s all about it. I don’t have to pretend. Once, years ago, he came to see Aunt Keturah and I answered the door. I don’t remember whether he looked at me then or not. It doesn’t matter. If we can see ghosts, ghosts can certainly see us. They can certainly speak to us, too, if they wish; though whether we can speak to them I’m not so sure. You’ve got the wrong idea entirely. “A ghost is simply a person or thing that joins you with the past, the unremembered or unrecorded or unknown past. Somewhere, sometime, at some place, and in some manner, Captain Vanton and I have met. I don’t know it; I feel it. You’re a chemical engineer and I’m a chemist, too, of a sort. I’m getting into chemico-therapy, the chemistry of the body, and chemical agencies in healing. Now chemistry is all right, in fact, it’s wonderful, but it doesn’t explain everything and it never will. You may say that’s because there’s a lot yet to be explored. There is, but when it has all been dug up and tested, something will still remain in the dark. The world will always have its ghosts.” Dick looked at her sympathetically. “If you were any one else, Mermaid, I’d say you were nutty,” he vouchsafed. “I’ll admit this place is enough to make a person go plumb insane. Look at that coffin! And look at these freaks about us!” Mermaid smiled. By the flickering of the candles he could see three freckles, the three he always remembered, about her nose, rather high up, a decorative arrangement to call attention, perhaps, to the brilliant blue of her eyes. He was struck again with the sense of her charm and unusualness. He had never met another girl like her, and he knew he never would. There couldn’t be, anywhere. What other girl, versed in exact science, would argue earnestly for the existence of ghosts? Dick knew that she meant what she was saying. He thought to himself: “It’s only the difficulty of getting it over to me. There aren’t the words, I suppose. She’d always be two jumps ahead of you!” Aloud he said: “Then your ghost may be someone else’s flesh and blood. Ghost--flesh--blood--coffin--skull and crossbones--nightmare people. This is the life!” Mermaid laughed. There was a ring in her laugh of complete surrender to mirth. A joyful surrender. She said: “I am worried about Aunt Keturah. She hasn’t been well. I’m going home as soon as college closes. I don’t suppose I’ll see you again soon, Dickie.” “Why not?” said her companion. “Come West with me--you and she--to San Francisco this summer. I’ve a water purification job across the bay in Marin County. It would do your aunt a lot of good to see California. There’ll be days when I’ll have nothing to do--waiting around while tests are going on and contracts are being drawn. We could go to Palo Alto and Monterey and Lake Tahoe. Perhaps farther.” Mermaid considered.