It suddenly came to me that I was talking in a most idiotic way, and I turned Caroline's left shoulder to the mirror. Resisting the temptation to follow the changing expressions of her face, I watched the smoke from my cigar as it floated across the luncheon-table or mounted toward the ceiling. At the outset, I derived a good deal of satisfaction from the change of attitude. My thoughts assumed a healthier tendency. The morbid, half-crazy inclinations that my mind had begun to display passed away and something like contentment with the present and hope for the future came gently to me. Even the question that would force itself upon me now and again as to what Caroline might be doing or undoing at my office failed to destroy wholly the pleasurable calm begotten of solitude, cognac and tobacco. I even found myself contemplating Caroline's white, tapering fingers, outstretched to flip the ashes from my panatella, with a satisfaction that was a strange compound of pride and jealousy. I could not refrain from an unworthy sense of delight at the thought that Caroline was being punished for her brazen defiance of my wishes every time she glanced at my hands.
But I had become a creature of changing moods, a prey to errant fancies. As I realized that my cigar--shrinking reminder of happier days--was nearly smoked out, and that my term of comparative freedom drew toward its end, the fever of impotent rebellion burned in my veins--if they were mine. To a practical, energetic individual, accustomed to having his own way in small matters and great, the recurrent conviction that he has become the plaything of mischief-loving powers concerning which he knows little or nothing is not conducive to long intervals of repose. I was growing restless again, eager for action, but afraid to indulge in it; craving news of Caroline, but lacking courage to obtain it.
Suddenly a startling thought flashed upon my darkened mind, illuminating, convincing, explanatory. Caroline and her friends had been dipping into Oriental philosophy. Was it not more than probable that my wife had deliberately planned a soul-transposition that had ensured her freedom and made me a captive?
The longer I contemplated this supposition, the stronger grew my belief that Caroline had attempted a psychical experiment, the success of which accounted for her haughty, domineering manner after breakfast. It was clear enough, now, as I looked back upon the episodes that I have been recording. My wife's horror at the discovery of our soul-transposition had been merely a clever bit of acting. Her seizure of my mail and insistence upon a visit to my office had been parts of a well-laid plan. It was evident that she had become an adept in the theory and practice of transmigration, and had sacrificed me beneath the Juggernaut of her eccentric ambition. If she found the life of a business man attractive, I was at her mercy, doomed to skirts and corsets until she wearied of my career. Furthermore, it was not unreasonable to suppose that, while Caroline had acquired sufficient diabolical power to transpose our identities, she had not gained enough occult wisdom to restore our souls to their respective bodies. If that should prove to be the case, if she was only half-educated as a psychical switch-tender, the future for me became dark indeed. I could see before me a long stretch of weary, hopeless years, down which I tottered toward a welcome grave, solaced only now and then by the creature-comforts that I loved, the while Caroline made merry with my affairs. Beset day after day by Suzanne, Mrs. Taunton and other women in various stages of imbecility, I should be driven to desperation at last and bring disgrace, in some form or other, upon a proud name.
And how cleverly Caroline had played her little game! Had I not often complained loudly of the annoyances appertaining to a business man's life? Could not Caroline silence my accusing tongue with the assertion that she had presented me with a life of luxurious leisure, to take up burdens and responsibilities under which I had always grumbled? Had I not often protested against the new woman's efforts to better her condition, on the ground that woman had long enjoyed more special privileges than fell to the lot of man? I was forced to acknowledge that, even if Caroline was responsible for our psychical interchange, I could not remain consistent and utter any very emphatic complaint. She would fall back upon my own propositions and prove conclusively, quoting my remarks, that, whatever may be the case with his soul, it may profit a man to lose his own body.
A hot wave of impotent anger swept through me, and I turned in a rage toward the mirror. The expression that my rebellious soul had thrust into Caroline's face destroyed the last vestige of my self-control. Seizing a carafe from the table, I hurled it at the sideboard, and my wife's face disappeared in a chaos of broken looking-glass.
Horrified at my recklessness, I hurried toward the door as rapidly as my skirts would permit. In the hall stood Jones, motionless, phlegmatic, gazing at me with a calmness that had in it something of superiority.
"Go in there--ah--butler, and make yourself useful," I cried, angrily, as I brushed past him to seek the library. "Don't be so damned statuesque!"
A few moments later, I had hooked Caroline at the end of a telephone wire.
"When are you coming up-town--ah--my dear?" I managed to gasp, with some show of diplomacy.