ff going to work. Within half a minute I was in
a chilled-off frame of mind that was capable of recognizing the facts
but not caring much one way or the other.

When he saw the stuff taking hold, Thorndyke asked, "Steve, just who is
Catherine?"

The shock almost cut through the drug. My mind whirled with all the
things that Catherine was to me, and the doctor followed it every bit of
the way.

"Steve, you've been under an accident shock. There was no Catherine with
you. There was no one with you at all. Understand that and accept it. No
one. You were alone. Do you understand?"

I shook my head. I sounded to myself like an actor reading the script of
a play for the first time. I wanted to pound on the table and add the
vigor of physical violence to my hoarse voice, but all I could do was to
reply in a calm voice:

"Catherine was with me. We were--" I let it trail off because Thorndyke
knew very well what we were doing. We were eloping in the new definition
of the word. Rhine Institute and its associated studies had changed a
lot of customs; a couple intending to commit matrimony today were
inclined to take off quietly and disappear from their usual haunts until
they'd managed to get intimately acquainted with one another. Elopement
was a means of finding some personal privacy.

We should have stayed at home and faced the crude jokes that haven't
changed since Pithecanthropus first discovered that sex was funny. But
our mutual desire to find some privacy in this modern fish-bowl had put
me in the hospital and Catherine--where--?

"Steve, listen to me!"

"Yeah?"

"I know you espers. You're sensitive, maybe more so than telepaths. More
imagination--"

This was for the birds in my estimation. Among the customs that Rhine
has changed was the old argument as to whether women or men were
smarter. Now the big argument was whether espers or telepaths could get
along better with the rest of the world.

Thorndyke laughed at my objections and went on: "You're in accident
shock. You piled up your car. You begin to imagine how terrible it would
have been if your Catherine had been with you. Next you carefully build
up in your subconscious mind a whole and complete story, so well put
together that to you it seems to be fact."

But, #--how could anyone have taken a look at the scene of the accident
and not seen traces of woman? My woman.#

"We looked," he said in answer to my unspoken question. "There was not a
trace,