Marc immediately became starkly upright on the slab-like examination table, and at once, Toffee's wayward mode of dress was forcibly recalled to him. She still wore the same filmy, transparent scrap of material, and it, for its part, still seemed to cling to her remarkable figure reluctantly, as though having urgent business elsewhere. It was a material that could conceivably be put to a wide variety of uses, but it was unfortunate that not one of these uses was, in the remotest way, connected with the coverage of the human body. "You--you--you--No!" Marc sputtered incoherently. "No?" asked Toffee. "No! You can't be here!" Marc gasped. "It isn't right! You'll just have to go back to where you came from." Toffee's expression swiftly became that of the patient martyr. "Do I have to explain it to you every time?" she asked. "You know perfectly well that I've materialized from your subconscious, and I can't possibly return until the proper time--whenever that is. I promise faithfully to disappear when you sleep or lose consciousness--then I have to go back--but until my mission is accomplished, I have to keep right on materializing during every one of your waking hours. I do wish you'd get used to the idea." Marc winced perceptibly. "Your mission?" he asked. "Of course," Toffee said. "You men are all alike,--just a pack of selfish dogs. You must have needed me for something or you wouldn't have dreamed me up again." "But you can't stay this time," Marc wailed. "I'm a married man now." "Oh, don't let that bother you," Toffee said reassuringly. "I don't mind a bit. In fact, I think it's lovely for you to be married." Marc leaned defeatedly back on the table and buried his face in his hands. "Oh, no--no," he murmured mournfully. Then, he sat up quickly as a voice sounded from just outside the door. "Is this the right room?" it asked. "Is this where you put Pillsworth?" Then there followed a silence in which another unseen being apparently answered. "Holy smoke!" Marc whispered. "You've got to get out of here! If they find you in here, like that, all hell will break loose." His eyes searched the room frantically and finally came to grateful rest on a white cloth covered screen in the far corner. He pointed quickly to it. "Get behind that!" "What for?" hissed Toffee, placing a slender hand defiantly on a round, smooth hip. "Why do you always want me to hide just when a man comes around?" "Don't argue!" Marc said threateningly. "Get behind that screen!" "Oh, all right," Toffee pouted, "but I think you're just a kill-joy." * * * * * Slowly, she crossed the room, and slid behind the screen, just as the door opened to admit one of the tallest interns Marc had ever seen. In his white uniform, he looked like one of the chalk cliffs of Dover, and his ruddy face might well have been the sun rising over that cliff.