"You seemed to believe in the vision of Altair," she persisted, eying him archly. "You were carried away by her wonderful beauty. I don't blame you. Her loveliness is beyond anything on this earth. A vision like that of sublimated womanhood, purified of all its dross, is very hard on us mortals. Altair doesn't find it necessary to eat eggs and toast, as I am doing this minute. I'm a horribly vulgar and common creature I know, and I ought to apologize, but I won't. I like being a normal human being, and if you don't like to see me eat you may go away." "I like nothing better than to see you eat, and I've just had a couple of eggs myself. I was hoping all the time you would come down and join me, but you didn't." "I didn't get to sleep as usual last night," she confessed, with a change of tone. "Altair came to me and kept me stirred up till nearly two o'clock." "What do you mean?" "I mean she hung about my bed, tapping and sighing incessantly for what seemed like hours." "Could you see her?" "Part of the time. Finally I turned up the light and got rid of her." He sat in silence for a few moments, then burst out wildly: "Are we all going crazy together? When I hear you talk like that it makes me angry, and it makes me sad. I never met such people before. What does it all mean? Seems like everybody around my mother is bitten by this ghost-bug." "You, too," she accused. "You caught a little of the madness last night." "I did, I admit it; but I'm going to throw it off. I won't have any more of it." "Is your curiosity satisfied?" "No, it is not; but I'm not going to desert the good old sunny world I know for the kind of windy graveyard we faced last night. Even the eyes of Altair were sad. Did you notice it?" "Yes, I did," she admitted. "And that's one of the things I can't understand. The spirits all _say_ they are happy, but they _look_ wistful, and their voices indicate that they are filled with longing to return." "I'm going to break out of this circle of my mother's converts," he passionately declared. "I've got to do it, or 'll get all twisted out of shape like the rest of you. I'm going to try again to-day to reach some man who has never heard of a psychic. I'm going to some big mill and apply for manual labor. There's something uncanny in the way I'm kept circling around mother's cranky patrons. I'll get batty in the steeple if I don't get help. Let's go out for a walk in the park. Let's forget we're immortal souls for an hour or two. I want to see a tree. Let's go to the ball game--and to the theater to-night--that'll take all the money I have left, and leave me just square with the world, so I can jump into the lake to-morrow without anybody else's money in my pocket. Come, what do you say?" She perceived something more than humor in his noisy declamation, and accepted his challenge. "I'll go you," she slangily replied; "just wait till I get my walking-togs on."