He took her lightly by the shoulders and looked at her, quite as much for the sake of steadying his own nerves as from any expectation of learning anything by examination. Her eyes shone with an unwonted brightness, and seemed to him to gleam with an archness of which Alice would not have been capable. The cheeks were flushed, not feverishly, but healthily, and the girl had lost completely the appearance of exhaustion which had troubled him so long. The head was carried with a new erectness, and as he regarded her she tossed it saucily. "You may look at me as much as you like," she said gayly. "I can stand it. Don't you think I am better looking than she is?" He was convinced that Alice could not know what she was saying, yet he involuntarily cried out:-- "Don't, Alice! I don't like it!" She pouted her lips, lips which to his excited fancy seemed to have grown redder and fuller than he had ever seen them, and she made a droll little grimace. "I'm not Alice, I tell you. Kiss me." In all their long engagement Alice had never asked him for a caress, and the request hurt him now as something unwomanly. Instead of complying, he dropped his hands and turned away. She laughed shrilly. "Oh, you won't kiss me? I thought it was polite to do what a lady asked! Well, if you won't now, you will some time. You'll want to when you know me better." She moved away, but he caught her by the arm. "Stop!" he ordered her, with all the determination he could put into the word. "Wake up, Alice! Be done with this fooling!" The bright face grew anxious and the pouting lips beseeching. "Don't send me away! I'll be good! Don't make her come back!" "Alice," he repeated, clasping her arm firmly, "wake up!" "You hurt me!" she cried half whiningly. "You hurt me! I'll go." The wild brightness faded from the eyes, a change too subtle to be defined seemed to come over the whole figure, the old tired expression spread like mist over the face, and the familiar Alice stood there, passing her hand over her eyes. "What is the matter?" she asked, in a startled way. "Did I faint?" He was conscious that his look must have alarmed her, and he made a desperate effort to speak easily and naturally. "I guess you came mighty near it," he answered, as naturally as he could. "It's all right now." For some days nothing unusual happened, so far as Carroll knew. He watched Alice closely, and he plunged into all the literature on the subject of hypnotism upon which he could lay hands. He was not sure that at the end of a week's hard reading he was much clearer than at the beginning, although he had at least accumulated a fine assortment of terms in the nomenclature of animal magnetism. He cautiously questioned Abby, and learned that for some time Alice had been subject to what the old servant called "notional spells when she were n't herself." His friend the specialist was greatly interested in all that Dr. Carroll could tell him about the case.