Beekman Brown patted his friend on the shoulder.

“You take a cab, Smithy, and go somewhere.  And if I don’t come go on alone to the Carringtons’....  You don’t mind going on and fixing things up with the Carringtons, do you?”

“Brown, do you believe that The Green Mouse Society has got hold of you? Do you?”

“I don’t know and don’t care....  Smith, I ask you plainly, did you ever before see such a perfectly beautiful girl as that one is?”

“Beekman, do you believe anything queer is going to result?  You don’t suppose she has anything to do with this extraordinary freak of yours?”

“Anything to do with it?  How?”

“I mean,” he sank his voice to hoarser depths, “how do you know but that this girl, who pretends to pay no attention to us, might be a—­a—­one of those clever, professional mesmerists who force you to follow ’em, and get you into their power, and exhibit you, and make you eat raw potatoes and tallow candles and tacks before an audience.”

He peeped furtively at Brown, who did not appear uneasy.

“All I’m afraid of,” added Smith, sullenly, “is that you’ll get yourself into vaudeville or the patrol wagon.”

He waited, but Brown made no reply.

“Oh, very well,” he said, coldly.  “I’ll take a cab back to the boat.”

No observation from Brown.

“So, good-by, old fellow”—­with some emotion.

“Good-by,” said Beekman Brown, absently.

In fact, he did not even notice when his thoroughly offended partner left the car, so intent was he in following the subtly thrilling train of thought which tantalized him, mocked him, led him nowhere, yet always lured him to fresh endeavor of memory. Where had all this occurred before?  When?  What was going to happen next—­happen inexorably, as it had once happened, or as it once should have happened, in some dim, bygone age when he and that basket and that cat and this same hauntingly lovely girl existed together on earth—­or perhaps upon some planet, swimming far out beyond the ken of men with telescopes?

He looked at the girl, strove to consider her impersonally, for her youthful beauty began to disturb him.  Then cold doubt crept in; something of the monstrosity of the proceeding chilled his enthusiasm for occult research.  Should he speak to her?

Certainly, it was a dreadful thing to do—­an offense the enormity of which was utterly inexcusable except under the stress of a purely impersonal and scientific necessity for investigating a mental phase of humanity which had always thrilled him with a curiosity most profound.

He folded his arms and began to review in cold blood the circumstances which had led to his present situation in a cross-town car.  Number one, and he held up one finger: 

As it comes, at times, to every normal human, the odd idea had come to him that what he was saying and doing as he emerged from the subway at Times Square was what he had, sometime, somewhere, said and done before under similar circumstances.  That was the beginning.