This announcement came unexpectedly, hurriedly, one evening just before tea. The Mystic was evidently excited. Mrs. Vanderhook was startled. She said,—“Great Scott”—in tones of alarmed surprise.
“Be not alarmed, sweetest of mortals. It is nothing very dangerous. Nothing, only a very disagreeable trip. My body has been left unguarded. There are some very large and unpleasant tigers in the vicinity, and should they strike the scent, you know,—I must return and get into my body and have some one kill the beasts. Then I will take some material refreshment, relocate my body more securely and back again to my Goo-Goo Eyes.”
“But why should you bother about that old body?” pouted the lady. “Ain’t you all right as you are?”
The mystic laughed. It was a soundless convulsion of mirth.
“Why, my kitten, don’t you see that even though we love, we are not upon the same—same—plane? That is to say, you’re in the physical body, and I’m out of mine.”
“Well, but what difference?”—she began.
“All the difference possible, in this particular world, my queen. Now don’t you see my little scheme? When you succeed in this divorce business I mean to resume my physical body, feed it up, cut its hair, and get it some good clothes, and then—why, then,—I intend to bring it back here in the regular way,—and then—we’ll be regularly married.”
It was now the lady who laughed.
“Well, if you ain’t too cute for anything.”
They had previously consulted a Chicago lawyer who assured them, statutes to the contrary, he not only would work the decree, but would secure alimony in addition. He said he would base the suit upon cruelty and desertion and abandonment without “visible or tangible cause.”