"Hello! What's up?" I said, as she shrank into the embrasure by the
window.

"The--the man below in the churchyard;--he drove the hearse."

"Nonsense," I said, but Tessie's eyes were wide with terror. I went to
the window and looked out. The man was gone. "Come, Tessie," I urged,
"don't be foolish. You have posed too long; you are nervous."

"Do you think I could forget that face?" she murmured. "Three times I saw
the hearse pass below my window, and every time the driver turned and
looked up at me. Oh, his face was so white and--and soft? It looked
dead--it looked as if it had been dead a long time."

I induced the girl to sit down and swallow a glass of Marsala. Then I sat
down beside her, and tried to give her some advice.

"Look here, Tessie," I said, "you go to the country for a week or two,
and you'll have no more dreams about hearses. You pose all day, and when
night comes your nerves are upset. You can't keep this up. Then again,
instead of going to bed when your day's work is done, you run off to
picnics at Sulzer's Park, or go to the Eldorado or Coney Island, and when
you come down here next morning you are fagged out. There was no real
hearse. There was a soft-shell crab dream."

She smiled faintly.

"What about the man in the churchyard?"

"Oh, he's only an ordinary unhealthy, everyday creature."