life. The upward journey, thought Marc, was to be very like the descent, except for the accompanying sound of the voice, as it repeated over and over, "Run! Run!"

"Hit and run," someone was saying. "This guy was on the wrong end of it. Got it right in the middle of the street. According to his identification, his name is Pillsworth. He's not really hurt, just bruised up a little."

Then, a door closed somewhere, and a distinctly antiseptic smell was whispering to Marc that he was in the receiving room of a hospital. He lay still and kept his eyes closed for a moment. His head had become the uneasy heir to a dull throbbing feeling.

After a moment of silent consideration, he opened his eyes and then closed them quickly. He could have sworn that he'd seen Toffee smiling down at him. But that was impossible! It couldn't possibly happen twice in one lifetime to the same man,—not one that drank as little as he did, anyway. In another moment, however, a pair of warm lips were pressed firmly against his own, to tell him that it not only could happen, but had. In a mood of utter helplessness, he did not resist.

"Well, that's more like it!" Toffee said happily.

Marc immediately became starkly upright on the slab-like examination table, and at once, Toffee's wayward mode of dress was forcibly recalled to him. She still wore the same filmy, transparent scrap of material, and it, for its part, still seemed to cling to her remarkable figure reluctantly, as though having urgent business elsewhere. It was a material that could conceivably be put to a wide variety of uses, but it was unfortunate that not one of these uses was, in the remotest way, connected with the coverage of the human body.

"You—you—you—No!" Marc sputtered incoherently.

"No?" asked Toffee.

"No! You can't be here!" Marc gasped. "It isn't right! You'll just have to go back to where you came from."

Toffee's expression swiftly became that of the patient martyr. "Do I have to explain it to you every time?" she asked. "You know perfectly well that I've materialized from your subconscious, and I can't possibly return until the proper time—whenever that is. I promise faithfully to disappear when you sleep or lose consciousness—then I have to go back—but until my mission is accomplished, I have to keep right on materializing during every one of your waking hours. I do wish you'd get used to the idea."

 Prev. P 6/38 next