Katie laughed mockingly. “There you go!” she said, with silent contempt.
“I wish you would!” I snapped back mentally. “It seems to me that you manifest a great lack of refinement in coming here!”
“I cannot go until Vavasour has finished,” said Katie pertly. “Don’t you see that he has materialized me by dreaming about me? And as there exists at present”—she placed an annoying stress upon the last two words—“a strong sympathy between you, so it comes about that I, as your husband’s spiritual affinity, am visible to your waking perceptions. All the rest of the time I am hovering about you, though unseen.”
“I call it detestable!” I retorted indignantly. Then I gripped my sleeping husband by the shoulder. “Wake up! wake up!” I cried aloud, wrath lending power to my grasp and a penetrative quality to my voice. “Wake up and leave off dreaming! I cannot and will not endure the presence of this creature another moment!”
“Whaa——” muttered my husband, with the almost inebriate incoherency of slumber, “whasamaramydarling?”
“Stop dreaming about that creature,” I cried, “or I shall go home to Mamma!”
“Creature?” my husband echoed, and as he sat up I had the satisfaction of seeing Katie’s misty, luminous form fade slowly into nothingness.
“You know who I mean!” I sobbed. “Katie—your spiritual affinity, as she calls herself!”
“You don’t mean,” shouted Vavasour, now thoroughly roused, “that you have seen her?”
“I do mean it,” I mourned. “Oh, if I had only known of your having an entanglement with any creature of the kind, I would never have married you—never!”