"Papa," she said, "this is Mr. Amidon, whom I have induced to dine with us; Mr. Amidon, Professor Blatherwick."
Professor Blatherwick was bent, and much bleached, faded and wrinkled. His eyes seemed both enormous in size and sunk almost to his occiput, by reason of being seen through the thickest of glasses. His lank, grayish hair, of no particular color, but resembling autumnal roadside grasses, hung thinly from a high and asymmetrical head, and straggled dejectedly down into a wisp of beard on chin and lip—a beard which any absent-minded man might well be supposed to have failed to observe, and therefore to have neglected to shave. When Madame le Claire stopped in leading him forward, he halted, and feeling blindly forward into the air as if for Amidon's hand, though quite ten feet from him, he murmured:
"I am bleaced to meet you, sir."
"Evidently German," thought Amidon.
"I understandt," said the professor, opening the conversation, as Madame le Claire poured the tea, "that you haf hadt some interesding experiences in te realm of te supliminal."
Amidon's tension of mind, which had left him under the compulsion of the woman's mastery of him, returned at the professor's remark.
"I have been dead," said he, "since the twenty-seventh of June, 1896!"
Madame le Claire stared at him in unconcealed amazement. The professor calmly dipped toast in his tea.
"So!" said he. "Fife years. Goot! Dis case vill estaplish some important brinciples. Vill you be so kindt as to dell us te saircumstances?"
"Oh, papa!" broke in the lady. "You must wait until after dinner. I saw Mr. Amidon was weak and disturbed, and, I thought—hungry. So I asked him to stay."