“What is it?” inquired Selden, smiling also as Benton’s features froze to a mask. “Let me tell you, first,” interrupted Cleves, “that my wife’s psychic ability and skill can make me visualise and actually see scenes and people which, God knows, I never before laid eyes upon, but which she has both seen and known. “And one morning, in Florida, I asked her to do something strange—something of that sort to amuse me—and we were sitting on the steps of our cottage—you know, the old club-house at Orchid!—and the first I knew I saw, in the mist on the St. Johns, a Chinese bridge humped up over that very commonplace stream, and thousands of people passing over it,—and a city beyond—the town of Yian, Tressa tells me,—and I heard the Buddhist bells and the big temple gong and the noises in streets and on the water——” He was becoming considerably excited at the memory, and his lean face reddened and he gesticulated as he spoke: “It was astounding, Recklow! There was that bridge, and all those people moving over it; and the city beyond, and the boats and shipping, and the vast murmur of multitudes.... And then, there on the bridge crossing toward Yian, I saw a young girl, who turned and looked back at my wife and laughed.” “And I told him it was Yulun,” said Tressa, simply. “A playfellow of my wife’s in Yian,” explained Cleves. “But if she were really Chinese she didn’t look like what are my own notions of a Chinese girl.” “Yulun came from Black China,” said Mrs. Cleves. “I taught her English. I loved her dearly. I was her most intimate friend in Yian.” There ensued a silence, broken presently by Benton; and: “Where do I appear in this?” he asked stiffly. Tressa’s smile was odd; she looked at Selden and said: “When I was convalescent I was lonely.... I made _the effort_ one evening. And I found Yulun. And again she was on a bridge. But she was dressed as I am. And the bridge was one of those great, horrible steel monsters that sprawl across the East River. And I was astonished, and I said, ‘Yulun, darling, are you really here in America and in New York, or has a demon tangled the threads of thought to mock my mind in illness?’ “Then Yulun looked very sorrowfully at me and wrote in Arabic characters, in the air, the name of our enemy who once came to the Lake of Ghosts for love of her—Yaddin-ed-Din, Tougtchi to Djamouk the Fox.... And who went his way again amid our scornful laughter.... He is a demon. And he was tangling my thread of thought!” Tressa became exceedingly animated once more. She rose and came swiftly to where Benton was standing. “And what do you think!” she said eagerly. “I said to her, ‘Yulun! Yulun! Will you _make the effort_ and come to me if I _make the effort_? Will you come to me, beloved?’ And Yulun made ‘Yes,’ with her lips.” After a silence: “But—where do I come in?” inquired Benton, stiffly fearful of such matters. “You _came_ in.” “I don’t understand.” “You came in the door while Yulun and I were talking.”