"It is evidently a subliminal self coming to the surface," he pronounced. "I've seen cases somewhat similar, but only one where the patient was not hypnotized by somebody else." "But what can I do about it?" George demanded. "I don't want any subliminal selves floating about. I want the girl I know." "Build up her general health," the other advised. "You say she's run down and used up with taking care of her grandmother. Get her rested. That's the only thing I can say. She is n't really ill, is she?" "God knows what you call it," was Carroll's response. "She can't be called well when she goes off the way she did the other day. I tell you it was frightful, simply frightful!" The days went on, and once more George had the uncanny experience of a chat with Jenny. Alice had been looking over some of her grandmother's belongings, and when he called, came down to him with a necklace of rhinestones dangling and sliding through her fingers. "See," she accosted him, in the buoyant manner he remembered only too vividly, "is n't this gay? I should wear it, only I'm in her clothes, and she won't wear anything but poky black." Carroll tried to steady his nerves against the sudden shock. "Of course you wear black, Alice," he said; "it is only six months since your grandmother died." She made him a merry, mocking grimace. "Now don't pretend you don't know I'm Jenny," she retorted. "I saw you knew me the minute you heard me speak. Alice! Pooh! She'd have come into the room this way." She darted to the door and turned back, to advance with her face pulled down and her eyelids dropped. "How do you do, dear?" she greeted him, with a burlesque of Alice's manner so droll that he laughed in spite of himself. Jenny herself burst into a shout of merriment and whirled about in a pirouette, swinging the sparkling chain around her head. "Is n't it fun?" she exclaimed, pausing before him with her head on one side; "she can't even look at a bright thing half a minute but off she goes, and here I am. Before I go this time, I'm going to stick up every shiny thing I can find where she'll see it." Carroll had a sickening sensation, as if the girl he loved had gone mad before his very eyes; yet so completely did she appear like a stranger that the feeling faded as soon as it arose. This was certainly no Alice that he knew. He could not speak to her as his friend and betrothed, although it was equally impossible to address her as a stranger. He was too completely baffled and confused to be able to determine on any line of action, and she stood smiling at him as if she were entirely conscious of what was passing in his troubled brain. "Did you know I cut up her letter?" Jenny demanded, with a smile apparently called up by the remembrance. "Yes," he answered, exactly as if the question had been put by a third person. "It was an awfully foolish letter," the girl went on. "I won't have her writing like that to you. You've got to belong to me."