thoughts—they're not mine; they're hers! My mind's draining out of me. Don't let me go, Mark. Don't let me! I love you, Mark—"

"Light! That's what we need!" Mark exploded into action. Sprang toward the wall switch. "Hold on, Elaine. Three hundred watts will drive that damned ghost away—"

"... I'm falling! I'm falling! Oh, Mark, I love you so! Mark, help me! Help!"

The girl's voice rose in a scream of wild terror. It tore at Mark's eardrums. Echoed through the stillness of the sleep-bound house like a banshee's wail.

The man's hand knocked up the switch. Flooded the room with light. Even as he did so he was whirling. Springing back to Elaine's side. And barely in time, for her backbone seemed to have turned to water. Her limp body was slipping to the floor in a nerveless heap, her muscles slack and unresponding. By a miracle of balance, Mark's hands caught her in time to break the force of her fall. He lifted her, unresisting, in his arms. Her ashen lips still were moving in the faintest of whispers—

"... je t'aime, mon cher, je t'aime...."

Her voice trailed off. A great sigh shook her. She lay unconscious in his arms.

Mark's brain was spinning like a top within his skull. He was breathing hard, and he was trembling, as if he had just run a long way.

"... I love you, my dear, I love you...."

That was what she had said.

But why had she spoken in French?

Even as he hesitated in an agony of indecision, the door burst open. The frail, white-haired figure of Professor Duchard, Elaine's father, stumbled into the room. His eyes were sleep-fogged, and spindly, pajama-clad legs showed below the dressing gown he had thrown about his thin shoulders.

"What is it? What has happened?" he mumbled. Even in his dazed state, he pronounced every syllable. There were no slurrings nor contractions in Professor Duchard's punctilious vocabulary.

"Elaine's fainted."

"Then carry her to her room. I shall get smelling salts from the medicine cabinet."

Turning, the professor scurried away. Mark followed, Elaine's soft body still limp and yielding in his arms. Ascending the stairs to her room, he laid her tenderly on the bed. Even as he did so, the girl's father hurried to his side, a dark green bottle in his hand. The old man was more fully awake now, and he looked down at his daughter with keen, intelligent eyes. Although outwardly he appeared calm, there was a little flicker of worry deep within those sharp blue optics.

"This should revive her!" he announced, waving the bottle. Pulling out the glass stopper, he held the container close under the girl's nose.

Elaine drew a little breath. The fumes swirled into her nostrils. She choked. Jerked spasmodically.

And slumped back, still unconscious!

Again the professor applied the carbonate of ammonium.

Again the results were the same.

The old man straightened.

"I do not like this," he clipped. "You had better tell me just what happened."

Mark shifted nervously under the scrutiny of the sharp blue eyes.

"Start at the beginning," the professor commanded. "I want to know from exactly what this 'fainting spell' resulted."

The younger man nodded slowly.

"It all began after you went to bed," he explained. "I said good-night to Elaine, then decided to step outside and have a smoke before I turned in myself.

"When I got upstairs, Elaine opened her door. She already was undressed—had on the negligee she's wearing now. She said she wasn't sleepy, and that she'd decided to come back down for another look at the presents. So I came along...."

Carefully, yet concisely, Mark outlined the events which had preceded the girl's collapse. When he had finished, Professor Duchard looked even more worried than before.

"I do not like what you tell me," he informed the younger man. "I believe this is a case for a doctor. A good one. I have a friend who is a neurologist. I shall call him."

He disappeared toward the telephone.

Not once in the half-hour preceding the specialist's arrival did the girl stir. She lay upon the big double bed like a lovely corpse, unmoving save for the slight rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed.

The neurologist examined her with keen interest.

"A remarkable case!" he declared. "Her pulse and respiration have slowed to the point where they are scarcely apparent."

Professor Duchard nodded slowly.

"But what does it mean?" exploded Mark, beside him, his handsome young face pale and haggard. "Why can't you revive her?"

The doctor frowned, pinched his chin thoughtfully.

"A remarkable case!" he repeated slowly. "To be frank about it, I can't find the slightest clue as to what's wrong. She seems in a perfect state of health. Organically I can detect no possible cause for this coma. Yet she doesn't respond to any resuscitatory measures."

"But there must be something—"

The specialist shot Mark a disapproving glance. Without a word he opened his bag, taking from it a smaller case of instruments. He selected a long, slender dissecting needle. Plunged its point into a bottle of disinfectant.

"Watch me!" he commanded.

Turning to the bed, he plunged the needle an eighth of an inch into the unconscious girl's breast!

Mark's eyes went wide with horror. He started forward. Found himself halted by Professor Duchard's hand.

"You asked a question, Mark!" the white-haired scientist rapped. "The doctor merely is giving you his answer. Look at her!"

Elaine had not stirred! If anything, she lay even more still than before, not a muscle so much as quivering. Her eyes were closed, her face calm, her golden hair halo-like about her head.

The neurologist bared her thigh. Again plunged in the needle.

She did not move.

A dozen times the physician pricked her, moving over the white surface of her body from one nerve center to another. At last he straightened.

"You see?" he demanded grimly. "Anaesthesia is complete. She feels nothing."

Mark's eyes were horror-stricken. He was breathing hard.

"What does it mean, doctor?" he choked. "What's happened to her?"

The medical man motioned him closer.

"Touch her!" he ordered.

Half-afraid, Mark bent forward. He rested his trembling fingers against the girl's breast. The next instant he jerked back, his face gray with shock.

"My God!" he gasped. "She's dead! Her body's getting cold! She's dead!" His face twisted in a grimace of emotional agony.

"No!" contradicted the neurologist.

"What!"

"No," repeated the other. "She's not dead, young man."

"Then what—"

"The closest I can come to it in language you'd understand is to say that she's falling into a state of suspended animation," the doctor answered. "Her bodily functions are slowing down. I believe this will continue—that eventually her muscles will tighten into catalepsy."

"What will happen eventually?" Professor Duchard broke in.

The neurologist shrugged. "I don't know, professor. My hope is that she simply will continue to lie in a coma. But there is always the possibility that the thread of life will break. That she will die without recovering consciousness—"

"You can't let her!" cried Mark hysterically, unable to restrain himself longer. "She musn't die! She musn't! You've got to do something, doctor! There must be a way—"

"—if it can be found!" interrupted Professor Duchard. He again gripped the younger man's arm. "Do not let yourself go to pieces, my boy. That will not help.

"Because you, yourself, are a man of action, you want our friend, here, to prescribe for Elaine with the same speed and certainty that you would go after a hot news story. Only that is not the way of science, Mark. We must be patient and hope for the best, content in the knowledge that everything possible is being done for Elaine."