“And was that what made you wear a necktie to bed?” she asked, ironically.
He nodded an affirmative. “I knew it was idiotic—but the idea kept running in my mind. It seemed as if the only way I could go to sleep was to give in to it. I don’t have these freaks unless I’m very tired.”
She said nothing more at the time, but that evening she broached the subject of his looking for an opening in some less sedentary occupation—a subject to which she thereafter constantly recurred.
Then came a development that surprised and excited me with its possibilities.
Exhausted, drained to the last drop of his nerve-force, Louis was returning late one night from the bank, following the usual month-end overtime grind. As he walked from the car-line, I hovered over him, subduing his personality, forcing it under control, with the effort of will I had gradually learned to direct upon him. The process can only be explained in a crude way: It was as if I contended with him, sometimes successfully, for possession of the steering-wheel of the human car that he drove.
Velma was waiting when we arrived. As Louis’ feet sounded on the threshold of their apartment, she opened the door, caught his hands, and drew him inside.
At the action, I felt inexplicably thrilled. It was as if some marvelous change had come over me. And then, as I met her gaze, I knew what that change was.
I held her hands in real flesh-and-blood contact. I was looking at her with Louis’ sight!
V.
THE shock of it cost me what I had gained. Shaken from my poise, I felt the personality I had subdued regain its sway.