"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?" Thus I mused, but suddenly I said, "You will not mind taking a little light physic, will you?"
"What! to make me well!" she exclaimed. "To imprison my spirit within my body, as you have done Charles'. But stay, if I take your physic, it will not be yet. I will wait to see if Charles is really lost to me for ever. If he does not appear again all this week, then his spirit has no longer power to wander from the body, and if he is lost to me, why should I wander about in the spirit seeking him in vain? I might just as well be cured as not."
"Very well," I said; "then, for the present it is needless to administer any medicine?"