"Not to my knowledge."

"Have you any objections to telling me about yourself during our interview? Who are you? What is your background?"

"I will be glad to tell you about myself, if you think it will be interesting," she replied, after a barely perceptible pause. "How I came by this exceptional ability of mine, I have no slightest conception. I only remember that when I was young, and still without the intellect to evaluate social mores and customs, I was often placed in positions of awkwardness by my ability to read minds. At an early age, however, through the council of my parents, I learned to keep this knowledge to myself.

"By the time I reached my twentieth birthday, my parents were both dead and I was alone in the world. I had never learned any occupation. I made some attempts to use my mind-reading to some advantage to myself, but soon found that I encountered the opposition of the medical associations as well as the law. As a consequence, I turned to show business as the one means of earning a legitimate livelihood. There is not much more to tell."

"Can you actually read minds?" Bennett asked insistently.

"I can."

"Then what am I thinking now?"

"You are thinking," Lima said, with no semblance of a trance or any of the other usual antics of professional mystics, "that I look exactly like a woman you have never seen, but whose image you have carried in your mind since your childhood."

For just a moment, the startling accuracy disconcerted Bennett.

"I have a problem which is quite annoying," he pushed on almost frantically. "Can you tell me what my problem is?"

"You have been subject to extremely severe headaches, which you have been unable to remedy, either by sedatives or with the help of a neurologist. Am I correct?"

"More than you could possibly know! Look, I came here believing you were a fake. That didn't matter—it was the fact that you looked like this other woman that counted. I'm convinced now. I want your help. Can you help me, or at least tell me whether the neurologist is right about the cause of my headaches?"

"He is wrong," Lima said. "I can tell you what causes them, but I am afraid that I will have to ask for another hundred dollars for that extra service."

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