I see you look surprised that I should know
where you come from; but my senses are too keen, too abnormally acute,
not to perceive that you carry about you _the particles of his being_
as unmistakably as if you had been amongst roses or honeysuckles. Can I
be deceived when you come to me directly from the chamber of the only
man I ever loved in my life, with the atoms of his nature clinging to
you? Think you that I know aught of your doings? That I have been
informed as to where _he_ lives? I tell you, No; I know nothing but what
my senses tell me. I feel you have been with him, and whatever you might
tell me to the contrary would not make me believe otherwise." "Well," I said smiling, "I don't deny that I _have_ just come from a
patient in London, whose name is Charles; but London is large, and there
are many Charleses." "I do not care _where_ your patient is--whether at London or the North
Pole, I shall probably never come across him; in fact, I don't see that
it would aid matters much if I were to. I have never seen him--that is
to say, with these eyes--and probably never may," she said, with a deep
sigh. "Do I understand you to say that you have never seen this young man you
talk about, and yet you take so much interest in him?" "Never with the eyes of the body," she replied. "How, then?" I asked. "With the eyes of the spirit." "That is to say," I resumed, "that this young man named Charles is but a
creature of the imagination--that he has no real existence." "Oh, pardon me," she replied; "decidedly he has an existence--a double
one. A bodily one, of which I know nothing; and a spiritual one, of
which I know more." "How?" I asked. "You have never seen him in the flesh, but are yet
acquainted with his spirit. Does the spirit leave his body and appear to
you?" "Precisely so." "Oh! but these are hallucinations, my dear young lady," I said, "that
patients in your state of health are frequently subject to." "No, doctor; say not so," she answered. "It is now more than a year
since, that in my dream, as I was walking alone in a beautiful garden, I
met a young man, also quite alone and reading. He was of extraordinary
personal beauty. He looked at me a moment and passed by. The very next
evening I had the same dream--there he was again. The dream was so very
vivid, that I could not believe it to be one of those ordinary dreams so
common to persons suffering from indigestion. There was such a reality
about the whole--the garden, the terraces, the old house--altogether had
too much truth about it to have been a dream." "And what do you think it was, if not a dream?" I asked, smiling. "Nothing less," she replied "than a glimpse into that world so zealously
guarded from our mortal eyes as to make us doubt of its existence, or,
at least, to hold it as something so ethereal and visionary that we
tremble even to speculate on it; but which, nevertheless, exists, has
existed, and will exist to all eternity in form as palpable as the earth
we this day inhabit." I mused a little, then said, "Dreams are often very vivid; I know that
by experience, but upon waking I have always been able to account for
them in some way or other." "Don't call this a dream of mine, doctor," she said. "In everything it
is most unlike the dreams of your experience. Those you allude to are
vivid only for one night, and disperse into air on waking. Such is not
the case with my dreams. The dream of each night to me is the
continuation of the dream of the preceding night, and this has been
regularly going on for more than a year, each dream being crowded with a
series of events such as would be sufficient to fill up a lifetime; and
so vivid, indeed, is the colouring of everything in these visions, that
I no more doubt in a double existence than that I am talking to you at
the present moment. In awaking, too, I find, that instead of vanishing
like an ordinary dream, I bear ever afterwards the strongest
recollection of everything that has happened during my period of sleep." "Indeed!" I exclaimed. "It is very strange. I am just attending a young
man in London who shares your complaint. The case is a rare one; I never
came across one before at all like it. The coincidence about the whole
affair is so strange, too. His name happens to be Charles, and whilst
talking in his sleep as they tell me you do, I have heard him mention
the name Edith. Your name, is it not?" "'Tis he! 'Tis he!" exclaimed my patient, enthusiastically, throwing up
her arms and clasping her hands above her head. "I knew it, I knew it! But tell me more about him, doctor! I did not see him last night, and I
was so unhappy. The night before he appeared to me less distinct than he
had ever done before. Oh, doctor," she cried, in an agonising tone, "you
are _curing_ him, you are _curing_ him!" much in the same way as she
might have called out, "You are _killing_ him!" "Yes, I hope to some day. There is no great harm in that, I suppose?" I
remarked. "Oh, yes, indeed!" she cried; "you are imprisoning his spirit within his
body, and I shall never see him again." "Well," I thought to myself, "this is about the oddest courtship _I_
ever heard of; but," I continued, aloud, "supposing I could cure you
both; then, afterwards, you might meet in the flesh; and how much better
that would be. You would preserve your health and----"

"No, no," she cried. "Do you think our joys could be half so intense, so
ethereal, in a fleshly life as when walking in the spirit? No, doctor,
have mercy upon both of us, and leave us to die; we shall then be all
spirit." "Charles' sentiments exactly," I muttered. "Are they not?" she said, brightening up. "He, then, has let you into
the secret of this phenomenon of his being! Oh, doctor," she exclaimed,
"don't, don't, _cure him_!" She spoke with such agony of feeling, that I could not help feeling the
deepest sympathy for her, and I actually for a moment began to waver in
my duties as a medical man. I began to think that, if, as it now
appears, two human beings, having never met in the body, are
nevertheless by some occult law of nature, permitted to hold communion
with each other in the spirit as lovers, what cruelty in me to try and
cut short their happy time of courtship! Would it not be kinder in me
(seeing that the order of their beings differs so from that of the rest
of the herd) to go against the common duties of my profession, and
instead of trying to remedy the malady, to accelerate it, till it
resulted in death. "But no," I said to myself, immediately; "my reputation, my conscience. What! _I_ a poisoner! No," I said; "we must all die some day, and my two
lover patients must hold out in this life a little longer. Death comes
soon enough for all, and then, if their spirit love was as lasting as it
appeared to be intense, they might resume their amours after this mortal
coil was doffed. What are a few paltry years compared with the
immeasurable gulf of eternity?"