"Do let him, Mrs. Alderling," I entreated, humoring his joke at her
silence.

She smiled, and softly shrugged, and then sighed.

"I could make your flesh creep," he went on, "or I could if you were not
a psychologist. I assure you that we are quite weird at times."

"As how?"

"Oh, just knowing what the other is thinking, at a given moment, and
saying it. There are times when Marion's thinking is such a nuisance to
me, that I have to yell down to her from my loft to stop it. The racket
it makes breaks me all up. It's a relief to have her talk, and I try to
make her, when she's posing, just to escape the din of her thinking. Then
the willing! We experimented with it, after we had first noticed it, but
we don't any more. It's too dead easy."

"What do you mean by the willing?" I asked.

"Oh, just wishing one that the other was there, and there he or she is."

"Is he trying to work me, Mrs. Alderling?" I appealed to her, and she
answered from her calm:

"It is very unaccountable."

"Then you really mean it! Why can't you give me an illustration?"