Tell me if you really love me.”

“Of course I do,” said she.

“Well, say so,” said he. “Why don’t you say so?”

“I have said so,” said she. “Of course I do. Isn’t that saying so?”

This vague, evasive reply dimmed all Frank’s happiness, as if a cloud had come over the sun. Doubt sprang up in his mind, and entirely ruined moments of exquisite bliss.

“What are you thinking of?” he would say.

“I don’t know,” she would reply.

“Well, you ought to know,” he would say, and then a quarrel would begin.

Once or twice he even ordered her back into her bottle. She obeyed with a malicious and secretive smile.

“Why should she give that sort of smile?” said Frank to the jinn, to whom he confided his distress.

“I cannot tell,” replied the jinn. “Unless she has a lover concealed in there.”

“Is it possible?” cried Frank in consternation.

“It is surprising,” said the jinn, “how much room there is in one of these bottles.”

“Come out!” cried Frank. “Come out at once!”

His charmer obediently emerged. “Is there anyone else in that bottle?” cried Frank.

“How could there be?” she asked, with a look of rather overdone innocence.

“Give me a straight answer,” said he. “Answer me yes or no.”

“Yes or no,” she replied maddeningly.

“You double-talking, two-timing little bitch!” cried Frank. “I’ll go in and find out for myself. If I find anybody, God help him and you!”

With that, and with an intense effort of the will, he flowed himself into the bottle. He looked all around: there was no one. Suddenly he heard a sound above him. He looked up, and there was the stopper being thrust in.

“What are you doing?” cried he.

“We are putting in the stopper,” said the jinn.

Frank cursed, begged, prayed, and implored. “Let me out!” he cried. “Let me out. Please let me out. Do let me out. I’ll do anything. Let me out, do.”

The jinn, however, had other matters to attend to. Frank had the infinite mortification of beholding these other matters through the glassy walls of his prison. Next day he was picked up, whisked through the air, and deposited in the dirty little shop, among the other bottles, from which this one had never been missed.

There he remained for an interminable period, covered all over with dust, and frantic with rage at the thought of what was going on in his exquisite palace, between his jinn and his faithless charmer. In the end some sailors happened to drift into the shop, and, hearing this bottle contained the most beautiful girl in the world, they bought it up by general subscription of the fo’c’sle. When they unstoppered him at sea, and found it was only poor Frank, their disappointment knew no bounds, and they used him with the utmost barbarity.

 

DE MORTUIS

Mr. Rankin was a large and rawboned man on whom the newest suit at once appeared outdated, like a suit in a photograph of twenty years ago. This was due to the squareness and flatness of his torso, which might have been put together by a manufacturer of packing cases. His face also had a wooden and a roughly constructed look; his hair was wiglike and resentful of the comb. He had those huge and clumsy hands which can be an asset to a doctor in a small upstate town where people still retain a rural relish for paradox, thinking that the more apelike the paw, the more precise it can be in the delicate business of a tonsillectomy.

This conclusion was perfectly justified in the case of Dr. Rankin. For example, on this particular fine morning, though his task was nothing more ticklish than the cementing over of a large patch on his cellar floor, he managed those large and clumsy hands with all the unflurried certainty of one who would never leave a sponge within or create an unsightly scar without.

The doctor surveyed his handiwork from all angles. He added a touch here and a touch there till he had achieved a smoothness altogether professional. He swept up a few last crumbs of soil and dropped them into the furnace.