o it, and see what would happen."
"She wants to experiment on _you?_"
"So I understand."
"And--you're not going to let her, are you?"
"Why not?"
"Because it's--it's idiotic!" said Smith, warmly. "I don't believe in
such things--you don't, either--nobody does--but, all the same, you can't
be perfectly sure in these days what devilish sort of game you might be
up against."
Brown smiled. "I told her, very politely, that I found it quite
impossible to believe in such things; and she was awfully nice about it,
and said it didn't matter what I believed. It seems that my name was
chosen by chance--they opened the Telephone Directory at random and she,
blindfolded, made a pencil mark on the margin opposite one of the names
on the page. It happened to be my name. That's all."
"Wouldn't let her do it!" said Smith, seriously.
"Why not, as long as there's absolutely nothing in it? Besides, if it
pleases her to have a try why shouldn't she? Besides, I haven't the
slightest intention or desire to woo or wed anybody, and I'd like to see
anybody make me."
"Do you mean to say that you told her to go ahead?"
"Certainly," said Brown serenely. "And she thanked me very prettily.
She's well bred--exceptionally."
"Oh! Then what did you do?"
"We talked a little while."
"About what?"
"Well, for instance, I mentioned that curiously-baffling sensation which
comes over everybody at times--the sudden conviction that everything that
you say and do has been said and done by you before--somewhere. Do you
understand?"
"Oh, yes."
"And she smiled and said that such sensations were merely echoes from the
invisible psychic wire, and that repetitions from some previous
incarnation were not unusual, particularly when the other person through
whom the psychic current passed, was near by."
"You mean to say that when a fellow has that queer feeling that it has
all happened before, the--the predestined girl is somewhere in your
neighborhood?"
"That is what my pretty informant told me."
"Who," asked Smith, "is this pretty informant?"
"She asked permission to withhold her name."
"Didn't she ask you to subscribe?"
"No; she merely asked for the use of my name as reference for future
clients if The Green Mouse Society was successful in my case."
"What did you say?"
Brown laughed. "I said that if any individual or group of individuals
could induce me, within a year, to fall in love with and pay court to any
liv
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