"Who can she mean?" I mentally asked. "Can she mean Charles?"
"Yes," she answered to my thought, "with him—with Charles. Hide nothing from me, doctor. 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."