Viola, perceiving his humor, said to herself: "I will not let you spoil my evening by making me angry. I will not listen to you," and she didn't, though she could not help hearing his warning growl.

"I'll expect you home early."

Once safely out of the house she said to Clarke: "This really is too much, Anthony. He is insufferable. If you don't tell him so, and teach him better manners, I will leave the house. But there! I said I wouldn't let him spoil our evening, and I won't—I won't even think of him again."

Serviss expected her to show some signs of the deep emotional stress of his former interview, but in this he was most pleasurably surprised. He marvelled at the height of her rebound from the wan helplessness of her mood upon the stairs. She was, indeed, a totally different being—a radiant, blooming creature belonging wholly to the world of youth—and he was scarcely able to relate the two scenes to the same girl, and again he exclaimed, "What an actress—if she is an actress!" She was very simply attired in pale blue with but few ornaments, but she bore herself like a queen demanding homage—and he gave it. He was all the lover and nothing of the scientist as he stood to greet her.

She, on her part, behind her proud mask, was breathing quick with pleasure. To meet Professor Serviss in dinner-dress, in his own home, exalted her above the pupil and transformed him into something more intimate than the master—something more dangerously compelling than friend.

Kate, quite carried away by her enthusiasm, caught the girl again in her arms. "You dear, sweet thing! I wish I had made a big party for you; you're too fine to be wasted on three cranky old scientists."

Serviss met Clarke with less of repulsion than he had anticipated, for, notwithstanding the preacher's haggard cheeks and a certain set glare which came into his eyes occasionally, he was a handsome figure. He was plainly on guard, however, and extremely ill at ease, and his eyes kept furtive watch on Viola's every movement.

Kate at once engaged him in conversation in order that he and Morton might not fall into argument, and with the further purpose of permitting her young people a little time for mutual explanation. She was glad when Weissmann came in, brisk as a boy, his keen eyes peering alertly through his horn-bowed glasses; he not merely proved a diversion, he completed her party. The great man was as animated as a cricket (this was his society manner), and upon being presented to Viola began paying her the most marked and absorbed attention, hopping briskly from one heavy German compliment to another, quite unaware, apparently, that she was anything more than a very pretty girl.

He took her out to dinner, with elaborate courtesy, and divided his attentions between his partner and his hostess with mathematical precision, beaming now upon Viola, now upon Kate, with such well-calculated intervals that Serviss broke into a broad smile.

"You find yourself well placed, Dr. Weissmann?"

"Well placed and well pleased," he responded, quickly, "with no thanks to you, I suspect."

Kate was much relieved by Weissmann's liking for Viola—it made her party a little less difficult; but she was anxious to have Morton free to talk with Viola, and to that end drew the good doctor into conversation with Clarke, who was not at all pleased with his seat, which was by design at the farthest remove from his psychic. He saw no reason why they might not have been seated side by side.

As Kate remarked to Marion afterwards, it was a hard team to drive, for the table was too small to permit anything like private conversation at either end, and to enter upon general topics was to start Clarke and Weissmann into dialectic clamor. "I trusted in the food," she answered to Marion's query. "It was a good dinner and kept even the preacher silent—part of the time."

Clarke's face was flushed with wine, and his glance, which rested often on Viola, was not pleasant. He was afraid of her when she shone thus brightly among careless, worldly, sceptical people. She seemed to forget her work, her endowments, and to think only of flattering speeches and caresses. It was all so childish, so foolish in her, so undignified in one who meant so much to the sin-darkened world.

Mrs. Lambert, on the contrary, was humanly glad (for the moment, at least) of her daughter's respite from her grave duties, and sat blandly smiling while the young people talked animatedly on a wide list of subjects.

Morton was delighted to find that Viola had read a good many books, not always the best books, but of such variety that her mind was by no means that of the school-girl. Her experience in life was very slight, but her hunger to know was keen. He was eager to draw her out on her morbid side, but, as he had said to Kate, "We must not permit anything to rob her of one evening of unbroken normal intercourse. If you can manage Clarke, I will do the rest."

Kate tried hard to "manage Clarke," and was succeeding rather adroitly. Whenever he seemed about to enter upon a discourse she interrupted him, met his ponderous phrases with flippancies, plied him with food (for which he had a singular weakness), and in many other womanly ways discouraged and, in the end, intimidated him. He was at a distinct disadvantage and knew it, and the knowledge irritated him. However, with all his eccentricities he was a man of considerable social experience, and, while he was not at any time joyous of countenance, he did not in open guise offend, though he sank at last into a glowering silence, leaving the talk to Weissmann.

Morton gave much attention to Mrs. Lambert, securing from her, almost before she realized it, a promise to join a theatre-party, and thereupon turned to Viola to say, "I hope you will consent."

"Consent?" she cried, with shining eyes. "I should like it above everything. You see I've never really lived in a big city, and it's all so new and splendid to me."

Morton responded lightly. "I wish I could see it with your eyes. I suppose New York is a wonderful city, and I'm sure all this chaos is making towards something unparalleled in beauty, but just now I take the point of view of a native who has been driven out of the good old down-town streets by vulgar trade. The Servisses lived for forty years at the corner of Corlear Square, but four years ago a big apartment hotel rose next door, shutting off our light, and we had to move. Hence our acrimony. The city grows more and more a show-place, wherein the prodigal American may buy the pleasure he thinks commensurate. Most of us who were born here have quite lost our hold on the earth; for instance, here we are, Kate and I, treed in a ten-story hotel on ground from which we used to gather huckleberries, and therein lies the history of many another New York family."

Viola looked round the spacious and handsome dining-room. "I think this way of living is beautiful. I want mamma to take an apartment over here on the Park. I love the Park, although it makes me homesick for the West sometimes."

"If you do decide to take an apartment, consult Kate. What she doesn't know of New York isn't lady-like for any one to know. Frankly, Mrs. Lambert, I should be very glad to see you get away from Pratt's house. He is, I fear, a selfish, brutal business-man—an egotist who would sacrifice you both instantly if it would add to his comfort of mind or body. But wait. I am forgetting my duties as host—we are to avoid all unpleasant topics," and thereupon he led the conversation back to impersonal discussions of books and music.

All through this exquisite little dinner Viola sat with a strengthening determination to assert her right to leave her gloomy prison-house on the Drive, a house in which there was neither wholesome conversation nor privacy nor order. An ambition to live humanly and harmoniously in an apartment like this grew each moment in definiteness. She appreciated the delicacy of the centre-piece of maidenhair-fern, veiling with its cloud of green a few flame-like jonquils. She took a woman's joy in the immaculate napery and in the charm and variety of the china. Such housekeeping was an art, and quite impossible without the personal touch of the mistress, and, as she looked across towards Kate's homely, pleasant face, her heart went out to her in gratitude and love. She could be trusted, this frank, laughing, graceful woman. She represented a most modern union of housewife and intellectual companion. No wonder Dr. Serviss remained unmarried.

Clarke's forbidding, unrelenting face, looming darkly at Kate's side, was revealed to her in a new and most unpleasant light. She resented his scowling glances, and pitied his failure to glow in such genial company. She saw him for the first time the prosing bigot, narrow and repulsive. She resented his failure to subordinate his theories. Up to this moment she had supposed herself respecting him; now she began to realize that she had lost even that, and the thought made her shiver with foreboding. How different were the men of science, with their jocular, irrelevant, but always illuminating comment on whatever subject they handled! It was all touch and go with them, and yet they were quite as serious as he.

As the coffee came in Kate rose with a word of caution: "Morton, we'll expect you to join us soon—"

"You may depend upon us," replied Weissmann.

"And you mustn't talk out all the interesting subjects—save some of them for us to hear."

"We shall not be able to talk on any other subject than yourselves," retorted Weissmann, gallantly, "and that would not be good for you to hear."

Kate laughed. "I know what that means. These Western girls are compelling creatures. Well, I will not complain if she only shakes you out of your scientific complacency."

They were hardly out of the room before Weissmann asked, "Is Miss Lambert from the West?"

"From the Rocky Mountains."

"So? I find her quite charming."

Morton dryly answered: "I noticed that. Yes, she's Western born, but of Eastern stock. Mr. Clarke is a New-Yorker, I believe."

"I was born in Maryland, sir, but all my early life was spent in Brooklyn."

Weissmann turned his telescopic eyes upon Clarke and studied him in silence somewhat as a pop-eyed crab might regard a clam. "So, so," he said, softly. "You are the one who is preparing to assault the scientific world—the Clarke mentioned in the papers to-day?"

Clarke folded his arms in defiant mood. "I am."

"And this charming girl is your victim—the one for whom you make such claims, eh?"

Clarke regarded the old man with imperious lift of the head. "She is, without question, the most marvellous psychic in the world."

"'Psychic!'" Weissmann barked this word at him like an angry mastiff. "'Psychic!' What business has she to be a 'psychic'? She is too lovely to be anything but a wife and mother—a happy hausfrau. And you would make her infamous? My friend, I do not understand you."

Clarke's eyes blazed. "If I had the power I would lay her message before every living soul on the globe. Infamy? Sir, I know no higher honor than that of being cup-bearer to despairing souls thirsting for the water of life." Then a direct answer to the old man's prolonged stare: "You need have no fear. I will not go one jot beyond the advice of her 'guides.'"

"Her 'guides'? Who are they?"

"I mean her invisible ministers, compared with whose wisdom our learning is child's prattle for they are one with the sages of history. Their minds drink of the limitless ocean of all past knowledge and catch the gleam of discovery to come. Furthermore"—here his voice grew hard and his glance shifted to Serviss—"no one living has a more vital interest in her welfare than I. Surely I may be trusted to guard and cherish one who is soon to be my wife."

This blow, delivered with the orator's telling arrangement of phrase, fell with tremendous force upon Serviss, towards whom it was vengefully directed. With a heart filled with anger and disgust and pain the young host responded: "I am glad to have this assurance from you, for your action has seemed to me calculated to do Miss Lambert irreparable injury. Of course, I do not doubt your good intentions as regards her—I cannot do that after your final statement—but I think you underestimate your opposing force."

"We expect battle, but nothing can really harm us. What do we care for the puerile dispraise of the press? We are doing God's work in the world, and as for the scientists, they are as moles in the dark."

Weissmann's voice became reflective. "Do the parents of the girl not object?"

"Quite the contrary. Her mother trained her for this great work."

"That is very strange—this mother seems nice and sensible."

Clarke sneered. "You physicists think nothing is natural or sensible but your own grubbing. You nose in the mire studying parasites of decaying flesh, while we are lifting wing into the world of spirit where neither pain nor death is known. You are blinded by your bigotry, or you would see the leading of every new discovery in the modes of motion. Heat, light, the X-ray, the emanation of radium—do they not all point to new subtleties of the physical universe? The power which the spirits use to communicate with us, the world which they inhabit, is only a higher evolution, a more potent condition—"

Weissmann arrested him in full flight and began to question him about Viola's powers, drawing from him rapidly, and with the precision of a great lawyer, all that he would say of her case, while Serviss, smoking quietly, listened in deep amazement, so candid, so sincere did Clarke seem to be in his answers. He was more—he became eloquent, almost convincing; and the young scientist was forced to acknowledge once more that appearances were deceitful. "Can this man be the fakir I have thought him? He is a bigot, a crazy fool, but he does not fit the role of villain; and yet—"

He could not put the alternative into words, so deeply did it involve Viola herself.

The preacher was in full flow—turgid, studiedly ornate, egotistical, and bombastic, but the final effect, even upon Weissmann, was that of one deluded, rather than of one carrying on a deep and far-reaching system of deception. He bodied forth the emotional moralist seeking escape from the ferocity of the creed in which his youth had been nurtured, rather than the self-seeking, coldly calculating fortune-hunter. With lofty courage he concluded:

"Now to you, gentlemen of science, we say: We respect your methods, but not your subjects of study. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than a perusal of your books. The patient way in which you pursue some clew in the labyrinth of biology is admirable. I met a man last week—a man I knew in college—and upon my asking what he was doing he replied, gravely, 'For the last six months I've been making a study of the parasites in the abdomen of the flea!'" Here Clarke's sneering laugh broke out. "Yet that man despised me—called me a fool—because I, forsooth, was intent on the laws which govern the return of the dead." His laugh died, he became very earnest and very sincere. "Now, men of science, all we ask of you is to apply your precision of handling to subjects a little more worth while than the putrid body of an insect."

Serviss laughed, but Weissmann, with true German contrariety, returned the compliment gravely. Being confronted with a true believer, he automatically assumed the opposite position, and with searching scorn assailed the whole spiritist camp with merciless knowledge of every defenceless portal.

For a time Morton enjoyed Clarke's discomfiture, but at last his sense of duty as host awoke and he was about to come to the preacher's relief when Kate appeared in the doorway, and the old warrior lowered his lance and rose politely.

Kate gave him a reproving glance. "You've been arguing—I can tell by your guilty looks."

"Oh no, not at all; a mere statement of opinion—of no interest, I assure you."

Kate's voice was eager. "Mr. Clarke, Viola wants to sit for us—have you any objections?"

"Kate!" called Serviss. "I am ashamed of you—"

"I assure you I didn't ask it—I didn't even hint towards it. 'Cross my heart—hope to die.'"

Morton was at the moment displeased, for he had been looking forward to a long and intimate conversation with Viola in the drawing-room, and would have been glad if Clarke had opposed it firmly—which he did not. Perhaps he saw a chance to turn the tables on his critics; at any rate, he rose, saying, "I will talk with her and decide the matter," and followed Kate out of the room.

"What is it? What did she say?" queried Weissmann, bewilderedly.

Morton explained that Miss Lambert had particularly requested him to sit with her and talk to her "guides," and that she had expressed a particular desire for an immediate test.

Weissmann's eyes glittered with new interest. "Very good. Why not? It is a fine opportunity. Do you not feel so?"

In truth he did not. The intrusion of the abnormal side of Viola's life seemed at the moment not merely inopportune but repulsive. As he entered the drawing-room he found her sitting in a low chair beside a small table on which stood a shaded lamp. Clarke was talking with her, and Serviss could detect even at a distance the depressing change which had come to her. Her girlish ecstasy was quite gone and in its place lay pallid languor and a look of appeal.

Clarke moved away as his host approached, and Viola, glancing up wanly and wistfully, said: "Isn't it stupid? Just when I was so happy. I wanted this evening free, but they would not have it so. No sooner was I seated here than they began to work on me. They say they want to talk with you—my grandfather especially—and I, too, want you to do so—only I didn't intend to ask it to-night. Please be patient with me, won't you?"

"Do not distress yourself about that. I shall be very glad to sit. I was afraid Kate might be requesting it. I particularly warned her against mentioning the subject, but if your 'guides' wish it, and you are willing, be sure Dr. Weissmann and I will be most pleased. But, tell me, how did the change come? What began to happen?"



"The usual tapping—here on the table—then my hand wanted to write. I ignored it—I fought it. I didn't intend to yield, but they set to work undermining my will, and then I knew that I must consent or be strangled. As soon as I gave up they took their fingers from my throat, but they are here—my grandfather is just back of me—I can feel his heavy hand on my head. I'm sorry, Professor Serviss. I was having such a good time. I hope you won't despise me."

"You are entirely too modest," he answered, cheerily. "We are highly favored. It's like having Paderewski volunteer to play for his dinner."

His lightness of tone hurt her a little. "You don't believe in me in the least, do you? You think I am an impostor?"

"Oh no. I believe in you."

"But you've got to believe in these manifestations if you believe in me."

"No, no, that does not follow," he replied, quickly; then, perceiving that this involved him, "All you do may possibly be explained without resort to the spiritualistic hypothesis—" He was embarrassed by her gaze.

"Why are you so contemptuous of spiritualists? It is very hard to bear."

He felt the rebuke. "I am not contemptuous—"

"Yes, you are. Scientific people never speak of us without a laugh or a sneer, and it hurts. It confuses me, too. If good people like you care nothing about death—if you only laugh—"

"I beg your pardon, Miss Lambert, I never intended to be either harsh or contemptuous. I do not accept—I mean to say I am unable to accept—your faith. I confess that my mind refuses to entertain the postulates of what Clarke considers a religion. I must be honest. I am a 'sceptic,' so far as your faith goes, but that does not mean that I do not believe in the sincerity of your mother; and as to your own powers—I do not wish to dogmatize, for the physical universe is a very large and complicate thing, and, young as I am"—here he smiled—"I don't pretend to a knowledge of all it contains."

She accepted his explanation, and, with musing candor, replied: "I don't really blame you. I suppose if these things had happened to some one else I would not have believed in them. I have thought a great deal of what you said to me. I want to get away from that house; I am hating Mr. Pratt more and more, and I will leave to-morrow if grandfather will only consent. If he comes to you to-night, tell him so—maybe my father will come, too. I want you to know my father. I'm sure you will like him. Isn't it strange that I have never been able to hear his voice?"

He ignored her question. "I do not understand the motives of your 'guides'—I cannot conceive of myself sacrificing you to any cause whatsoever."

"Don't awaken my doubts," she cried, despairingly. "I don't know why it is, but you always rouse in me something that makes war."

"I'm sorry if I seem to corrupt you."

"I don't mean that," she hastened to say. "The life which you and your sister represent is the life I love. I was almost resigned to my fate when your sister called upon me. Now I'm all rebellion again. Being here to-night makes me hate all that I am. I hate my very name. I hate Pratt and his horrible house—I almost hate my mother. Sometimes she is so cruel to me. She don't mean to be, but she is."

His face grew reflective, almost stern. "I wish there were some way of taking you out of the world in which you now suffer. I wish—" He paused, checked by the thought of Clarke's claims upon her.

"There is only one way—my grandfather must consent to my release; he rules us all."

This delusion rose like a stone wall at the end of every avenue, and Morton turned to a personal explanation. "I cannot associate what you seem to me now with what you were when I last saw you. What would you have said had I seized you the other day—snatched you from the stairs and ran—"

Her eyes opened wide. "The stairs?"

"Had you no knowledge of following your mother down the stairway after our interview?"

"I knew I was entranced, but I didn't know—What did I do?" She asked this anxiously.

"Nothing." He hastened again to change the current. "We were in hot argument. You came down as peace-maker. I went away cravenly, most impotently, leaving you there like a captive."

"I don't remember a word of it. I came to myself in my own room, and only mother was with me." Her rebellious fire blazed up again. "Oh, Dr. Serviss, I was resigned yesterday, but to-night I am in terror again, and they know it. They are eager to show their power, to confound you and convert Dr. Weissmann. I'm sure they will do some wonderful thing for you to-night if you will let them."

"The best thing 'they' could do for me would be to let you sit and talk to me," he replied in the voice of a lover.

She seemed to listen to some interior voice. "They are insisting. They are here—listen!"

As he listened a series of throbbing raps seemed to come from the chair beneath her hand.

"Very well, we will sit." As he said this three heavy, rending, low thuds sounded on the under side of the table.

"That is grandfather," she said. "He wants you to be very rigid, and so do I," she said. "Sometimes it seems as if I did these things myself—I mean certain physical things—and I get all mixed in my mind. I want you to study me." She passed her hand wearily over her face, and Morton looked at her in sorrow, meditating a firm, decisive assault on her hallucination, but checked himself. "If I am to help you, I must know all about you," he said at last, "and a sitting may help."

"You wonder at my fear of my grandfather, but that's because you don't realize his power. Let me tell you what happened to me once, when I tried to run away from him. I became desperate one summer vacation and determined to get away from it all. Without telling mother, I took the train one morning—" She paused abruptly and pressed both hands to her burning cheeks. "Oh, it was horrible! My grandfather threw me into a trance on the train, and the conductor thought I was drunk—" She shuddered with the memory of it, and could not finish. "Since then I have never dared to really oppose him."

He pondered her blush, the quiver of her lips, and the timid look of her eyes, and gravely answered: "I share your horror of an experience like that. But it does not endear your malevolent grandfather to me. He must be a kind of male witch—"

"You mustn't feel that way towards him," she cried out in some alarm. "He is firm because he feels that I should be doing my work—"

"I'd like to talk this matter over with him, but I don't like to have you entranced. Is that necessary?"

"Yes, to get the voices. The writing we can have any time."

"What do you do to induce this coma—this sleep?"

"Just fold my hands and give myself up."

"It seems a desecration of you; but if there is no other way we will grant 'the powers' audience."

At his word her face cleared, her fingers relaxed, and she smiled. "Thank you. He has taken away his hand."

As she rose and stood before him she seemed again the buoyant, care-free girl, and he could only weakly say, "It seems so ungracious, so inhospitable in us," as they walked side by side across the room to Kate.

Clarke was sitting in silence, without pretence of listening to his hostess, watching Serviss with gloomy, uneasy eyes—a fierce flame of jealousy burning in his brain. He recalled the change in Viola which had followed this man's visit to Colorow, and associated her first persistent revolt with him; and now, seeing her beside him, in his own house, looking up into his face, absorbed, fascinated, utterly forgetful of her duty, oblivious to every one else, was maddening. Her gown angered him. "Why did she wear that dress?" he fiercely asked himself. "She does not do that for me. She is in love with him—that is why. She shall not come here again. These people are destructive to her higher aims."

In this mood he changed his mind, opposed the sitting; but Viola convinced him that it was the will of her 'guides' and that it was a splendid opportunity to interest two renowned sceptics, and in that spirit he again reluctantly consented.



XIII

THE TEST SEANCE

Morton's study was decided upon as the most suitable place in which to experiment, for the reason that it had but one exit, a sliding double door, which led to the library, and its windows all opened upon the street, six stories below. A burglar could not have entered with full license to do so.

Viola assisted Morton and Kate in clearing the big mahogany table, while Weissmann conferred with Clarke. To judge from the girl's gayety and eager interest the preparations were for a game of cards rather than for a test seance in which her love and honor were at stake. Mrs. Lambert was quite serene; Clarke alone seemed anxious and ill at ease.

Weissmann, at Morton's request, assumed general direction, and betrayed an astonishing familiarity with the requirements. Under his direction they grouped themselves about the table as for whist, Viola at the north end, with Clarke directly opposite, and Kate and Mrs. Lambert on either side and quite near him. The two inquisitors then took seats—Morton at the psychic's right, Weissmann at her left.

When the positions were all decided upon, Viola, with a note of disappointment in her voice, asked, "Aren't you going to tie me?"

"Oh no," replied Morton, "the conditions are yours to-night. You are our guest. Our tests will be made at some other time."

"Please make them to-night," she pleaded. "Please make them as hard as you can."

Weissmann's glasses glistened upon her with joyful acclaim. "Very good, your wishes shall be met. Let us see—we shall tie you. Have you something suitable?" he asked of his assistant.

Morton took from his desk a roll of white tape. "How will this do?"

"Just the thing," Weissmann replied; "but we must have no knots, no tying. Kate, get your needle, we must fasten Miss Lambert in such wise that no one can say, 'Oh, she untied the knots!'"

Under his supervision Kate looped the tape about Viola's wrists and sewed it fast to her close-fitting satin cuffs. She then encircled her ankles with the tape, and Morton drew the long ends under and far back of the chair and nailed them to the floor. Thereupon Weissmann said, "I wish to nail these wristbands to the chair-arm.—Do we sacrifice the cuffs?" he asked of Viola.

"Yes, yes—anything. Nail as hard as you please."

"And the chair?" pursued the old man, glancing at Morton.

"Oh, certainly," replied he. "Science goes before furniture in this house," and a couple of long brass tacks were driven firmly down through both tape and sleeve.

"You poor child!" exclaimed Kate. "If they hurt you, cry out, and I will free you."

Weissmann then fastened a silk thread to her wrist and gave one end to Morton. "We will keep this taut," he said; "every motion will be felt."

As they worked the enthusiasm of investigation filled their eyes. They lost sight of the fact that all this precaution implied a doubt of the girl, and Viola on her part remained as blithe as if it were all a game of hide-and-seek.

Clarke, too, became exultant. "McLeod, now is your opportunity," he called to the invisible guide. "Bring your band and put the monist bigots to rout."

Morton moved about the girl with growing excitement, a subtle fire mounting to his brain each time his fingers touched her smooth, round wrists. Once she said, "I have never had a real test like this—this is what I wanted you to do. If anything happens now it will be outside of me, won't it?"

"We must be cruel in order to be kind," he answered, enigmatically.

At last Weissmann stood clear of her. "Now we are ready," he said, beaming with satisfaction. "You see I lock this door and here is the key." He held it up in confirmation. "I pocket the key. Now what?"

"Turn down the gas," replied Clarke. "Do not use electricity—the room must be perfectly dark."

"Why perfectly dark? I don't like that." Weissmann spoke with manifest irritation. "We should be able to see something."

Clarke shrugged his shoulders. "You can do as you wish. The guides say their manifestations are antagonized by light—and that darkness is necessary for these special phenomena of the cone."

"Oh, we have no cone!" exclaimed Mrs. Lambert.

"Cone? What cone?" asked Weissmann.

"We need some sort of megaphone to enlarge the spirit-voices."

"Make one of card-board," suggested Viola. "Any sort of horn will do."

Morton rose and took down a horn from the top of a bookcase. "Here is the megaphone of my phonograph; will it do?"

Clarke examined it. "It's rather heavy, but I think they will use it. Place it on the table. Put a pad and pencil there also," he added. "We may get some writing."

"Anything else?"

"No—now we are quite ready," replied Clarke, in his exhibition voice. "It is well to touch hands for a time—until the psychic sinks into her trance."

"With your permission," said Morton to Viola.

A faint flush came into her face. "Certainly, professor," and a touch of emphasis on his title had the effect of a slight, a very slight rebuff.

Clarke turned the light down to a mere point of yellow fire, and in the sudden gloom all were plunged into silence. "Now, whatever you do, gentlemen, don't startle the psychic after she goes into sleep."

Morton, with his fingers resting lightly on Viola's soft hand, experienced a keen, pang of sympathetic pain. "She is so charming! What profanation to develop the seamy side of her nature! What pitiful tomfoolery! She is in the lion's mouth now—and yet how eagerly she seemed to desire it. Weissmann has made anything but the simplest ventriloquistic performance impossible—she cannot lift a hand. To save her from herself, as well as from Clarke, it is necessary to expose her weakness as well as his trickery."

She was saying, in answer to a question: "No, Dr. Weissmann, I have no control over the manifestations; in fact, the more anxious I am, the longer we have to wait. I cannot promise anything to-night—"

Morton, hearing this, inwardly commented; "These obscure forms of hysteria often possess the cunning, the dissimulation of madness. Poor girl! She is beginning to realize her predicament, and is preparing us for disappointment," and a return of his doubt kept him silent.

Weissmann spoke. "Shall we not sing something—'We Shall Meet Beyond the River,' or some ditty like that?"

Thereat Kate said: "Doctor, you betray astonishing familiarity with the ways of 'spooks.'"

"Oh, I know everything."

"I begin to believe it," she retorted. "I begin to suspect that you are a secret adherent. Morton, you would better tie Dr. Weissmann, otherwise he may speak from the cone himself."

As if to counteract this banter Clarke began a discourse on the leadings of the most recent discoveries:

"The X-ray is a mode of motion, as light is a mode of motion, but the waves of light move in such a way as to clash with and weaken those of the X-ray; so we argue that the mode of motion, through which disembodied souls manifest themselves, being far subtler than the X-ray, is neutralized—though by no means destroyed—by the motion called light. Furthermore, there seems to be a reluctance on the part of the invisible ones to have the actual processes scrutinized. I once laid a pencil on the table and asked for a visible action of writing, vainly, so long as it was completely exposed, but upon being covered with a silk handkerchief it plainly rose and wrote. It could be distinctly seen moving beneath the cloth. Sir William Crookes had a similar experience, except in his case he saw the pencil move, prop itself against a ruler, and try three times to write—all in the light. I have seen letters form on an exposed surface of a slate, I have had hands appear through a curtain and write in the light, but the power must always be generated in shadow."

Kate shuddered. "Woo! It gives me the shivers to think of such things. Will anything as wonderful happen to-night?"

"I cannot tell—the conditions are severe, but I think we will have something. Viola?" he called, softly.

"Yes," she answered, faintly.

"Would you like us to sing?"

"No—I'd rather you'd all talk. Perhaps they will let me take part in the demonstration to-night. They promised to do so, you remember."

Weissman recounted some of the experiences Zoellner had enjoyed in Germany shortly after the Fox sisters became so celebrated in America. "Crookes and Wallace and several others went into the whole question at that time—the world rang with the controversy. But the clamor passed, the phenomena passed. It is like an epidemic, it comes and it goes, and in the end is humanity the wiser? No."

"Yes, it is," broke in Clarke. "We are just that much more certain of the indestructible life of the soul—every wave of this spirit-sea leaves a deposit of fact on the beach of time, makes death that much less dreadful. We make gains each decade. Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge, Alfred Russel Wallace, Lombroso have all been convinced of the reality of these phenomena. Surely such men must influence the thought of their time. Experimental psychology is on the right road—"

Morton was suffering with the girl, whose hand was beginning to tremble beneath his palm. She no longer replied to his questions, but that she was still awake he knew, for he could hear her sighing deeply, so deeply that the sound troubled him almost as if she were weeping. His impulse was to rise and turn on the light and give over this trial, which could only end in humiliating her. "Her temerity is a part of her malady," he argued. "It has arisen through years of misconceived petting and nursing on the part of her mother. Up to this moment her performances have always been in the presence of friends and relatives, or for the consolation of those eager to believe, and therefore easily deluded. Every sitter has conspired to practically force her into an elaborate series of deceptions, each deceit being built upon and made necessary by the other. It is pitiful, but she now believes in herself—that is pathetically certain. Otherwise she would not have yielded herself so completely into the hands of an inexorable investigator like Weissmann. She must take the consequences," he ended, with grim closing of the lips. "We must be cruel in order to be kind. This night may be her salvation."

Weissmann was replying to Mrs. Lambert. "I do not care for a return of my dead, madam; what I wish your daughter to do is quite simple. I would like her to move a particle of matter from A to B, without a known push or a pull—that is to say, by a power not known to science—as Zoellner claimed Slade was able to do for him."

"She can do it," cried Clarke. "She can move a chair from A to B without bringing to bear any of the known forces. She can suspend the law of gravity. She can make a closed piano play, and she can read sealed letters in an ebony box tightly closed and locked."

"You claim too much, my friend," replied Weissmann, ironically. "We shall be satisfied with much less. If she will change one one-hundredth part of a grain from one scale to another, under my conditions, I will be satisfied. The most wonderful phenomena taking place in the dark have no value to me."

Mrs. Lambert interposed. "Please don't argue—it prevents the coming of the spirits."

Both men felt rebuked and the group again settled into silence. Suddenly, Kate began to laugh, "Isn't it childish? Really, Morton, if our friends could see us sitting around here in the dark, as we are now, they would roar. Why should it all be so silly, Mr. Clarke?"

"It is not silly if we take the right view. We must sit together in order to get into harmony. We further these conditions by sitting in subdued light with fingers touching. Song adds still more to this concert of thought. Nothing is really silly or prosaic—all depends upon the minds of those—"

He was in the midst of an elaborate defence of spirit methods when Viola's hand began to leap as if struggling to be free. She moaned and sighed and writhed so powerfully that her chair creaked. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she cried, gaspingly.

"Is she trying to free her hands?" Morton asked himself, with roused suspicion. "Is this a ruse to cover some trick?"

Mrs. Lambert spoke quietly. "She is going! Sing something, Anthony."

Clarke began to hum a monotonous tune, while Morton, bending towards the girl, listened to her gurgling moans with growing heartache. "She seems in great pain, Mrs. Lambert. Don't you think we'd better release her? I do not care to purchase sensation so clearly at her expense."

"Don't be alarmed, she always seems to suffer that way when some great manifestation is about to take place."

The poor girl's outcries so nearly resembled those of a death struggle that Kate at last rose. "Turn up that light! She is being strangled!"

"Please be silent!" said Clarke, almost angrily. "Take your hands from her, gentlemen! You are too 'strong'—and do not startle her! Be quiet everybody!"

Morton took his hand away in anger and disgust. "All this is a ruse to weaken our grasp upon her," he thought. "Even the mother, so serene, so candid, is aiding the deception."

"Things will happen now," remarked Mrs. Lambert, confidently; "she is giving herself up at last."

The girl drew a long, deep, peaceful sigh, and became silent, so silent that Morton, leaning far over, with suspended breath, his ear almost to her lips, could detect no sound, no slightest movement, and listening thus he had for an instant a singular vision of her. He seemed to see her laughing silently at him from a distant upper corner of the room, and for the moment secured a glimpse into a new and amazing world—the world of darkness and silence wherein matter was fluid, imponderable, an insubstantial world peopled, nevertheless, with rustling, busy souls.

A sharp rapping began on the cone, a measured beat, which ended in a clang, which startled Kate into a shriek. "Who is doing that?" she asked, nervously.

"They are here," Clarke solemnly announced.

"Is that you, Waltie?" asked Mrs. Lambert, sweetly.

Three raps, loud and clear, answered "yes." A drumming on the cone followed, and Mrs. Lambert, her voice full of maternal pride, remarked: "Waltie is the life of our sittings—he's such a rogue! You must be a nice boy to-night—on account of these very distinguished men."

"Rap, rap!" went the cone.

"Does that mean 'all right'?"

"Rap, rap, rap!" Yes.

"Is grandfather there?"

"Yes."

"Does he wish to speak to the gentlemen?"

"Yes."

"Are we sitting right?"

A decided thump—"No."

Guided by the rapping Mrs. Lambert and Kate moved down to the foot of the table, sitting close beside Clarke, thus leaving Morton and Weissmann alone with the sleeping girl. No sooner were they rearranged than the table began to move, precisely as though pushed by the girl's feet. Still guided by the rapping, Weissmann and Morton moved with the table, but retained their threads of silk. Morton's pity had given place to a feeling of resentment at this device to get them farther away, and he drew his tell-tale thread tight across his finger. "If she moves she is betrayed," he thought with hardening heart.

No sooner were they settled than a fumbling sound began in the middle of the table, and the pencil was twice lifted and dropped. Following this the leaves of the writing-pad rustled as though being thumbed by boyish hands.

Kate shivered and cried out: "This is uncanny! Morton, are you doing this?"

"Certainly not," he replied, curtly.

"Do you feel any motion in your thread?" asked Weissmann, in a quiet voice.

"None whatever," Morton replied.

"Then the psychic is not moving."

Again they sat in silence, and after some minutes the fumbling began again and the horn was heard scraping slowly about, as if being lifted with effort only to fall back with a clang.

"Is it too heavy?" asked Clarke.

Three sharp raps replied—an angry "yes"—and then, with a petulant swing, the instrument apparently left the table and floated upon the air. In deep amazement Morton listened for some movement, some sound from Viola, but there was none, not a breath, not a rustle of motion where she sat, and the silk thread was tight and calm. "She has nothing to do with that," he said, beneath his breath.

Kate called excitedly, "Oh! It touched me."

"What touched you?" asked Weissmann.

"The horn."

"Did it bump you?"

"No, it seemed to float against me."

Morton spoke out sharply: "Where is Mr. Clarke?"

"Right here on my right," replied Kate.

"What idiotic business!" he exclaimed, mystified, nevertheless.

The horn dropped to the middle of the table, but was immediately swept into the air again as if by a new and more vigorous hand, and a voice heavily mixed with air, but a man's voice unmistakably, spoke directly to Morton, sternly, contemptuously.

"We meet you on your own level. You asked for material tests, and now conditions being as you have made them—proceed. What would you have us do?"

"Who are you?"

"I am Donald McLeod—grandfather to the psychic."

At this moment Morton became seized of the most vivid realization of the physical characteristics of the man back of the voice. In some mysterious way, through some hitherto unknown sense, he was aware of a long, rugged face, with bleak and knobby brow. The lips were thin, the mouth wide, the dark-gray eyes contemptuous. "It is all an inner delusion caused by some resemblance of this voice to that of some one I have known," he said to himself; but a shiver ran over him as he questioned the old man. "If you are the grandfather of the psychic," he said, "I would like to ask you if you think it fair to a young girl to use her against her will for such foolery as this?"

"The purposes are grand, the work she is doing important—therefore I answer yes. She is yet but a child, and the things she does of her own motion trivial and vain. We make of her an instrument that will enable man to triumph over the grave. You will observe that we do not harm her, we take but little of her time, after all. You are unnecessarily alarmed. Our regard for her welfare far exceeds yours. Her troubles arise from her resistance. If she would yield herself entirely, she would be happy."

As the voice paused, Morton asked, "Weissmann, can you hear what is being said to me?"

"Very indistinctly," answered Weissmann.

"What does it say?" asked Kate. "I can only hear a kind of jumble."

Weissmann interjected; "I must ask you, Mrs. Rice, have you tight hold of Mr. Clarke's hand?"

"Yes," answered Kate.

Morton's brain whirled in confusion and conjecture. He believed the whole thing to be a piece of juggling, and yet he could not connect Viola in any way with it, and it seemed impossible, also, for Mrs. Lambert to sit where she was and handle the cone, to say nothing of the ventriloquistic skill necessary to carry on this conversation. He again addressed the voice: "You consider your control of the psychic to be justified?"

"We do."

"Do you know, also, what perilous notoriety, what positive disgrace—from every human point of view—you are about to bring upon her?"

The hidden old man pondered a moment, as if to master a profound contempt, then answered: "We have taken all things into account. When she has grown to years of sobriety she will thank us that we turned her aside from dancing and from light conversation, and from all loose-minded companions. All the sane pleasures are now hers. She is soon to be idolized by thousands. Her playing on the piano, her singing are as the rustle of leaves in the forest compared to her mediumship, which is as a trumpet-blast opening the gates of the city of refuge to let the weary traveller in." The voice weakened a little. "The earth-life is but a school—the real life is here. Besides, when she has completely subordinated her will to ours, when she has given our message—" The spirit grand-sire seemed to falter and diminish. "My power is waning, but I will again manifest. We will try—" The voice stopped as though a door had been shut upon the speaker, and the megaphone dropped upon the table.

"All that is very interesting," commented Weissmann, "but inconclusive. Is it all over?"

"Oh no," answered Mrs. Lambert. "They are uniting upon something wonderful—I feel it."

As they listened the horn moved feebly, uneasily rising a few inches, only to fall as though some weak hand were struggling with it; but at last it turned towards Weissmann, and from it issued the voice of a little girl, thrillingly sweet and so clear that Serviss could hear every word. She addressed Weissmann in German, calling him father, asking him to tell mother not to grieve, that they would soon all be together in a bright land.

To this Weissmann replied in harsh accent: "You assert you are my daughter?"

The voice sweetly answered: "Yes, I am Mina—"

"But Mina could not understand a word of English—how is that?"

The little voice hesitated. "It is hard to explain," she replied, still in German. "I can understand you in any language—but I can only speak as you taught me."

Thereupon he addressed her in French, to which she replied easily, but in her native tongue.

As this curious dialogue went on Serviss was searching vainly for an explanation. "Mr. Clarke, will you kindly speak at the same time that this voice appears?"

Clarke began a discourse, and the two voices went on at the same time. The young scientist then said: "Mrs. Lambert, will you permit Kate to lay her hand over your lips? You understand, it is for the sake of science—"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Lambert.

Here the test failed of completeness, it was so difficult to get the three voices precisely together; but at last it seemed that the child's voice was produced at the same time that Clarke spoke and while Kate's hand covered the mother's mouth.

Thereupon the little voice said farewell, and all was silent for a few moments. The cone rose again into the air and a soft, sibilant voice addressed Mrs. Lambert.

"Oh!" she cried, joyfully. "It is Robert!—Yes, dear, I'm listening. I'm so glad you've come. Can't you talk with Professor Serviss?—He says he will try," she said to the company.

As Morton waited the cone gently touched him on the shoulder, and a moment later a man's voice, utterly different from the first one and of most refined accent, half spoke, half whispered: "We are glad to meet you, professor. I am deeply gratified by your interest in our dear girl."

"Who are you?" he asked, moved, in spite of himself, by a liking for this new personality, so distinct from the others.

"I am R.M. Waldron—Viola's father."

He seemed to wait for questions, and Serviss asked: "How do you feel about your daughter's mediumship? Are you not uneasy when you think of what you are demanding of her?"

The invisible one sighed, hesitated, and replied with evident sadness: "It troubles me to find her reluctant. I wish she were happier in the work. It seems so important to us." Then the voice brightened. "But perhaps it is only for a little while. After the public test—after the truth of her mediumship is made manifest—I think, I hope, we will ask less of her. Perhaps it will be possible to release her altogether for a time; but for the present she is too valuable—" The sentence was lost in a buzz of inarticulate whispering, as if two or three friends were consulting. The opening and closing of lips could be heard, and a stir within the horn was curiously trivial in effect, as if a mouse were at play with a dry leaf.

"If I were to organize a committee of men like Weissmann and Tolman, and other men of international fame, willing to test your daughter's powers, will you give over this public demonstration—this publishing of a challenge?"

Clarke interrupted almost angrily. "Not unless you promise to—"

"Be silent!" commanded Weissmann.

From the horn came a faint murmur, so dim, so far, Serviss could, with difficulty, distinguish the words. "We will consider that. I am going. Guard my girl. Good-bye."

The horn, again seemed to rest, and for a long time no sound or stir broke the silence, till at last Viola began to writhe in her chair in greater agony than before.

"I think she is waking," said Morton.

Mrs. Lambert answered, quickly: "No. Some great event is preparing—when this paroxysm passes some very beautiful test will come."

While Morton and Weissmann were considering this the girl again became silent as a stone, and a moment later a clear, sweet sound pulsed through the air as if an exquisite crystal bell had been struck. Then, while still this signal trembled in his ear, a whispering noise developed just before the young man's face, as if tremulous lips were closing and unclosing in anxious effort to communicate a message without the use of the trumpet.

"Is some one trying to speak to me?" he asked, gently.

Three measured strokes upon, the tiny bell replied, and with their pulsations the room seemed to stir with a new and different throng of winged memories. The very air took on mystery and beauty and a sweet gravity. Matter was for the moment as subtle, as imponderable as soul.

"Who is it?" he asked, and into his voice, in spite of himself, crept a note of awe.

The answer came instantly, faint as the fall of an autumn leaf on the grass.

"Mother."

Kate bent eagerly forward, "Who was it, Morton?"

Ignoring her question Morton addressed the invisible one. "Can't you speak again?"

There was no reply and the whispering ceased. Almost instantly the horn seemed grasped by a firm and masterful hand, and the rollicking voice of a man broke startlingly from the darkness in words so clear, so resonant, that all could hear them.

"Hello, folks. Is this a Quaker meeting?"

"Who are you?" asked Morton.

"Can't you guess?"

Kate gasped. "Why, it's Uncle Ben Roberts!"

The voice chuckled. "Right the first time. It's old 'Loggy'—true bill. How are you all?"

Kate could hardly speak, so great was her fear and joy. "Morton Serviss, what do you think now? Ask him—"

The voice from the trumpet interposed. "Don't ask me a word about conditions over here—it's no use. I can't tell you a thing."

"Why not?" asked Morton.

"Well, how would you describe a Connecticut winter to a Hottentot? Not that you're a Hottentot"—the voice broke into an oily chuckle—"or that I'm in a cold climate." The chuckle was renewed. "I'm very comfortable, thank you." Here the invisible one grew tender. "My boy, your mother is here and wants to speak to you but can't do so. She asked me to manifest for her. She says to trust this girl and to carry a message of love to Henry. I brought one of her colonial wineglasses with me—as a sign of her presence and as a test of the power we have of passing through matter."

For nearly an hour this voice kept up a perfectly normal conversation with a running fire of quips and cranks—recalling incidents in the lives of both Kate and Morton, arguing basic principles with Weissmann yet never quite replying to the most searching questions, and finally ended by saying: "Your conception of matter is childish. There is no such thing as you understand it, and yet the universe is not as Kant conceived it. As liberated spirits we move in an essence subtler than any matter known to you—ether is a gross thing compared to spirit. Your knowledge is merely rudimentary—but keep on. Take up this work and my band will meet you half-way. My boy, the question of the persistence of the individual after death is the most vital of all questions. Apply your keen mind to it and depend on old 'Loggy.' Good-by!"

Kate was quivering with excitement. "Morton, that settles it for me. That certainly was 'Loggy.' Oh, I wish mother could have spoken."

Morton's voice was eager and penetrating as he said: "Mrs. Lambert, I would like to place my hand on your daughter's arm again, I must be permitted to demonstrate conclusively that she has had nothing to do with the handling of the horn."

"I will ask the 'guides.' Father, can Professor Serviss—"

Three feeble raps anticipated her question.

"They say 'yes'—but they are very doubtful—so please be very gentle."

Serviss rose, his blood astir. At last he was about to remove his doubt—or prove Viola's guilt. "Doctor," he said, and his voice was incisive, "take the other side and place a hand on her wrist. That will be permitted?" he asked.

Three raps, very slow and soft, assented.

Clarke interposed. "I am impressed, gentlemen, to say: Let each of you put one hand on the psychic's head, the other on her arm."

"We will do so," replied Weissmann, cheerfully.

With a full realization of the value of this supreme test of Viola's honor, Morton laid his right hand lightly on her wrist. At the first contact she started as though his fingers had been hot iron, and he was unpleasantly aware that her flesh had grown cold and inert. He spoke of this to Weissmann, who replied: "Is that so! The hand which I clasp is hot and dry, which is a singular symptom." Then to the others: "I am now holding both her hands. One is very hot, the other cold and damp and I feel no pulse."

"She is always so," Mrs. Lambert explained. "She seems to die for the time being."

"That is very strange," muttered Weissmann. "May I listen for her heart-beat?" Three raps assented, and a moment later he said, with increased excitement: "I cannot detect her heart-beat."

Clarke reassured him. "Do not be alarmed. She is not dead. Proceed with your experiment." There was a distinct note of contempt in his voice.

As Morton laid his hand upon the soft coils of her hair Viola again moved slightly, as a sleeper stirs beneath a caress, disturbed yet not distressed—to settle instantly into deeper dream.

"We are ready," called Weissmann. "Whatever happens now Miss Lambert is not the cause. Take Mr. Clarke's hands in yours—"

"Mrs. Lambert's also," added Morton.

"Our hands are all touching," answered Kate.

"Now, let us see!" cried Weissmann, and his voice rang triumphantly. "Now, spirits, to your work!"

Clarke laughed contemptuously. "You scientists are very amusing. Your unbelief is heroic."

As they stood thus a powerful revulsion took place in Morton's mind, and with a painful constriction in his throat he bowed to the silent girl, and with an inconsistency which he would not have published to the world, he prayed that something might happen—not to demonstrate the return of the dead but to prove her innocence.

As he waited the pencil began to tap on the table, and with its stir his nerves took fire. A leaf of paper flew by, brushing his face like the wing of a bird. A hand clutched his shoulder; then, as if to make every explanation of no avail, the room filled with fairy unseen folk. Books began to hurtle through the air and to fall upon the table. A banjo on the wall was strummed. The entire library seemed crowded with tricksy pucks, a bustling, irresponsible, elfish crew, each on some inconsequential action bent; until, as if at a signal, the megaphone tumbled to the floor with a clang, and all was still—a silence deathly deep, as if a bevy of sprites, frightened from their play, had whirled upward and away, leaving the scene of their revels empty, desolate, and forlorn.

"That is all," said Clarke.

"How can you tell?" asked Kate, her voice faint and shrill with awe.

"The fall of the horn to the floor is a sure sign of the end. You may turn up the gas, but very slowly."

Stunned by the significance, the far-reaching implications of his experiment, Morton remained standing while Weissmann turned on the light.

Pale, in deep, placid sleep, Viola sat precisely as they had left her, bound, helpless, and exonerated. She recalled to Morton's mind a picture (in his school-books) of a martyr-maiden, who was depicted chained to the altar of some hideous, heathen deity, a monster who devoured the flesh of virgins and demanded with pitiless lust the fairest of the race.

Of her innocence he was at that moment profoundly convinced.



XIV

PUZZLED PHILOSOPHERS

While he still stood looking down upon her Viola began to moan and toss her head from side to side.

"She is waking," cried Mrs. Lambert. "Let me go to her."

"No!" commanded Weissmann, "disturb nothing till we have examined all things."

"Make your studies quickly," said Morton, his heart tender to the girl's sufferings. "We must release her as soon as possible."

Weissmann was not to be hastened. "If we do not now go slowly we lose much of what we are trying to attain. We must take her pulse and temperature, and observe the position of every object."

"Quite right," agreed Clarke, "Do not be troubled—the psychic is being cared for."

Thus reassured the two investigators scrutinized, measured, made notes, while Kate and Mrs. Lambert stood waiting, watching with anxious eyes the changes which came to Viola's face. Weissmann talked on in a disjointed mutter. "You see? She has no pulse. The threads are unbroken. The table is thirty inches from her finger-tips. Observe this pad, forty-eight inches from her hand—and which contains a message."

"Read it!" demanded Kate.

He complied. "'You ask for a particle of matter to be moved from A to B without the use of any force known to science. Here in this wineglass is the test. Oh, men of science, how long will you close your eyes to the grander truths.'"

"That is from father," remarked Mrs. Lambert.

"It is signed 'McLeod,' and under it are two words, 'Loggy' and 'Mother,' each in different handwriting."

"Give it to me!" cried Kate, deeply moved.

"And here is the wineglass," replied Weissmann, extracting from among the books a beautiful piece of antique crystal.

Kate took it reverentially, as if receiving it from the hand of her dead mother. "How came that here?"

"You recognize it? It was not left here by mistake?"

"Oh no. There are only four of them left and I keep them locked away. I have not had them out in months."

Clarke smiled in benign triumph. "That is why they brought it—to show you that matter is an illusion and to prove that dematerialization and transubstantiation are facts. That was the bell we heard."

"Morton, what do you think? How could—"

But Morton was bending above Viola and did not heed his sister. The girl's eyes were opening as from natural slumber, and he said, gently: "I hope you are not in pain? We will release you in a moment."



She smiled faintly as she recognized him. "My arms are numb, and my feet feel as if strips of wood were nailed to my soles," she answered, wearily, "and my head is aching dreadfully; but that will soon pass."

"She always complains of her feet," the mother explained. "She can't walk for quite a little while afterwards."

"You poor thing!" exclaimed Kate. "You are a martyr—that's what you are."

Viola looked up with sweet and anxious glance. "Did anything happen? Did your friends come to you, Mrs. Rice?"

"No, but several voices spoke to Morton."

"I'm sorry no one came to you. I've been a long way off this time," she continued, with dreamy, inward glance, "into a beautiful country from which I hated to return. I wouldn't have come back to you at all only a thread of light tied my soul to my body and drew me down to earth in spite of myself."

"What was it like—that far country?" asked Morton.

She pondered sleepily. "I can't tell you—only it was very beautiful and I was happy. Every one lived in the light with nothing to fear. I had no memory of the earth—only of my body which I was sorry for. There was no death, no cold, no darkness up there. I was very happy and free."

"You should be free and happy here," answered Morton, gravely. "Come, doctor, can't we free her now?"

"Yes, you may do so," he replied, still busy with his note-book.

The young host, with a feeling of having been unnecessarily brutal, ripped the tape loose from the floor, and Kate slipped the loops from Viola's ankles. Then, leaning on her hostess's arm, she rose slowly, smiling brightly, her weakness most appealing. "I hope a great deal happened—it means so much to me. I want to talk, but I can't now, my head is too thick. You must tell me all about it pretty soon."

"A great deal happened—you are quite clear of any connection with it."

Her face lit with placid joy. "Oh, I'm so glad! It must be very late," she added, turning to her mother.

"Yes, and we must be going," responded Mrs. Lambert, nervously. "Mr. Pratt will be impatient."

"I wish you'd stay with me to-night," pleaded Kate. "It was all so wonderful. I can't let you go. Please stay! Both of you. You're too tired to go out into the raw air."

"Oh no, we can't do that—not to-night," Viola answered, decisively.

Morton threw back the doors. "Kate, take Miss Lambert into the dining-room and give her something to drink. She is quite exhausted. Let me steady you," he said, tenderly, touching her arm. "You fairly reel with weakness."

"I will be as well as ever as soon as my blood begins to circulate," she bravely answered, and his touch quickened her pulse miraculously.

As soon as Weissmann had finished taking his notes and measurements, he locked the door of the library and joined them all in the dining-room, where they were sipping coffee and nibbling cake. Morton was sitting beside Viola (who had entirely regained her girlish lightness of mood), and was chafing her cold hand in the effort to restore the circulation as well as to remove the deep mark the silken thread had made about her wrist.

"We shall be obliged to shut out all young men from our committee," the old scientist jocularly remarked, as he stood looking down at them. "Lovely psychics like you would put the whole American Academy of Science in disorder."

Clarke, raging with jealous fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent mood. "Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?"

"Spooks!" answered the old man, with cheerful promptness.

Clarke reeled before this laconic admission. "What! You agree? You admit the agency of spirits?"

"Certainly—unless I say Miss Lambert wriggled herself out of her skin, which would not be nice of me, or that you are the greatest ventriloquist in the world. No, I prefer to compliment the spirits."

Clarke's face darkened. The old man's face and voice were too jocose. "I see you do not value our wonderful experiences to-night."

Viola, pinching her sleeve about her wrist, looked up roguishly. "I couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And if I did, how could I get the tacks back without a hammer?"

"Precisely. You would be more burglarious than the ghosts which walk through the key-holes," he answered.

"And the little girl who spoke German—who was she?" asked Kate.

The hour that followed was a delicious one for the young people, for they had come at last to some sweet and subtle understanding. As she recovered the use of her limbs Viola glowed with joy of Morton's change of attitude towards her. He, on his part, was puzzled by this mood. It was as if she had been vindicated to herself—liberated from some dead body of doubt.

Clarke glowered in silence; disapproving, with manifest disdain, the levity of the scientists, and resenting bitterly Viola's growing trust and confidence in Serviss. Each moment his anger took on heat, and he found it hard to reply even to his hostess, who tried to interest him in a deeper discussion of the evening's marvels. He seemed to have but one desire—to get away and to take Viola with him.

"Tell me," said Viola to Morton, "did papa speak to you?"

"A voice purporting to be your father spoke a few words."

"He is very nice. Didn't you think so?"

"The voice was very gentle and refined, and expressed a very tender regard for you."

She sighed. "I have never heard my father's voice, for he always comes when I am in my deepest trances. They say that I will be permitted some day to hear all the voices through the cone—I only hear them now in an interior way."

"Do you really suffer as you seem to do?" he asked, the echo of his pity still in his tone.

"Not after I am really gone. Did I groan?"

"Horribly! My heart was filled with remorse—"

"I'm sorry. It doesn't really hurt me—physically. You see I am perfectly well again. And yet I hate more and more to give myself up. I can't explain it, but I seem to be losing more and more of myself—that is the thought that scares me. I hate to think of being so helpless. It seems to me as if I were becoming like—like a hotel piano—for any one to strum on—I mean that any one in the other world—It is so crowded over there, you know!" Her brows drew together in momentary disgust.

"I don't know, but it must be so if all the myriads of past humanity are living there. If I had my way you would never sit again," he declared, most fervently.

"I wouldn't mind so much," she went on, "if I were not marked out for suspicion—if people would only talk to me of nice earthly things part of the time as they would to any other girl—but they never do. Everybody wants to talk to me about death and spirits—"

"That's what gives edge to my remorse," he interrupted. "Here am I doing the very things you abhor. To think that we who have made such a protest against your slavery could not allow you one free evening! I will not say another word on these uncanny subjects."

"But I want to talk of them to you! I wanted to tell you all about myself that day we rode up to the mine—but I could not."

"I wish you had. It might have made a great deal of difference in your life—and mine. I have been thinking of that ride to-night, as we sat in the darkness. If I could, I would keep you as girlish, as gay, as you were that day. This business is all a desecration to me. I love to think of you as you were then—when you laughed back at me in the rain. I wish we were both there this minute."

She smiled. "You forget the time of night!" Her face grew wistful. "I've been getting homesick for the mountains lately—and yet I like it here. I love this beautiful room. I adore your sister. I know I could have a delightful time if only my guides weren't so anxious to have me convert the world."

"I grow more and more conscience-smitten!" he exclaimed. "To think we should be the ones to tie and torture you, and at our first dinner-party!"

"Please don't blame yourself. It was not your fault; grandfather insisted on talking with you, and I—I wished it very much." Her face grew radiant with pleasure. "Oh, I'm so glad you made it a test-sitting!—I want you to believe in me. I mean that I don't deceive—"

"I am sure of that."

"There are so many things I want to talk with you about—but not now—it is late."

Clarke, who had grown too restless to remain seated, interrupted a story which Kate was relating, and rose, saying, harshly: "It is time for us to be going. Pratt will lock us out if we don't."

The cloud again fell on Viola's face—her little hour of freedom from her keeper was over. Morton felt the change in her, and so did Kate, who fairly pleaded with the mother to remain. "It is late and you are tired, and after this wonderful evening you ought not to go back to that gloomy place."

Mrs. Lambert looked at Clarke, whose reply was stern. "No, we must return."

Something very sweet and intimate was in Morton's voice as he found opportunity to say to Viola: "I don't like to think of you returning to that gilded mausoleum. It is a most unwholesome place for you. You are too closely surrounded with morbid influences."

"I know it. I dread to go back—I admit that. I suppose Mr. Pratt is a good man, I know he does a great deal for the faith, and he is very generous to us, but oh, he is so vulgar, so impertinent! He bores me nearly frantic by being always at my elbow. I shudder when he touches me as if he were some sort of evil animal. Mother can't realize how he annoys and depresses me, and Anthony insists that we must endure it."

"I wish you'd stay here!" he exclaimed, impulsively. "Accept my sister's invitation—it would give us such an opportunity to talk of this sitting. Come, let me send for your trunks."

She shrank a little from his eager eyes, and Mrs. Lambert again interposed. "It is quite impossible, professor; perhaps some other time."

Viola yielded to her mother and went away to get her cloak, and Morton turned to Clarke. "One of the conditions of my promise to organize a committee is this: you and Pratt must be excluded from the circle."

Weissmann echoed this. "Quite right! That we demand."

The clergyman's face hardened. "You ask the impossible. It is necessary for me to be present at each sitting. I have the right to be there as the historian of the case. Furthermore, I add to the strength of the manifestations—that I have fully demonstrated."

"I appreciate your position, but in order to avoid criticism, to make the tests perfect, it will be necessary to hold the sittings either here or at Weissmann's, and to exclude every one connected with Miss Lambert. In no other way can we convince ourselves or the public."

Clarke's face was darkly stubborn. "Then you will have no sittings. My challenge will go forth next Sunday afternoon, and one of the unchangeable clauses of that challenge will be this: the sittings must take place in Pratt's library and I must be present."

"I hope you will not insist on that," Morton further urged; "for Miss Lambert's sake you must not. To incorporate such terms in your challenge will brand her as an impostor and you and Pratt as her confederates. In this statement I think you will find her 'controls' agreeing. They were undecided to-night, but when they consider carefully they will see that my advice is sound."

Clarke's eyes were aflame. "You have my terms. Accept them or refuse them, as you please."

Viola, returning, extended her hand to Morton with a trustful smile. "I've had a beautiful evening."

"To say that after we have tied you hand and foot till you were numb, and kept you in the dark all the evening, is very gracious of you. I feel very much the brutal host. But you must come again. I swear Kate shall not pester you next time."

Kate was indignant. "Well, I like that! when you were the one crazy to experiment. Of course they're coming, coming to stay to-morrow night, and any one who dares to talk ghosts to her will be sent to bed."

And so in a hearty, cordial clangor of farewells they got out into the hall, and Morton, seeing Viola in her handsome cloak, her eyes shining, her face once more gay and smiling, was again filled with wonder at her astounding resiliency of mood. It was as if two sharply differentiated souls alternated in the possession of her body.

Clarke, wearing a cape overcoat and a soft hat, was far less admirable in appearance than when, with head uncovered, he sat within. He resembled a comic picture of an old-fashioned tragedian—a man glad to feel the finger of remark directed towards him, but his face was bitter, his eyes burning with anger, his lips white with pain.

Serviss relented as he studied him. "You'd better take Britt's trail and return to the mountains," he said, kindly. "This is a bad climate for you."

"My work is here," he replied, curtly. "I have no fear," and so they parted.

Weissmann was sitting in silent meditation in one corner of the dining-room when Serviss returned. "Well, master, what do you think of to-night's performance?"

Weissmann replied, in ironical phrase: "Hearing in civilized man is vague and indefinite. Spooks do well to limit their manifestations to a sense which most powerfully appeals to the imagination."

Morton spoke with great earnestness. "Weissmann, that girl could not move a limb. She positively remained where we put her. So far as I am concerned, to-night's test eliminated her from the slightest complicity, and I confess it rejoices me greatly; but who was responsible for the prestidigitation?"

Weissmann replied, slowly: "It is very puzzling," and fell into a muse which lasted for several minutes. At last he roused to say: "Well, we will see. Next time Clarke and the mother must be eliminated."

"You don't think evil of her?" exclaimed Morton.

"She is very anxious, you know—"

Kate put in her word. "It's all very simple," she said; "the spirits did it. You needn't tell me that Clarke or Mrs. Lambert got up and skittered around the room doing those things. I held their hands—and know they didn't get away. Besides, how did that glass come there? and how could they make those voices sound so natural? What is the use of being stupidly stubborn? If you treat Viola fairly she will confound your science."

"You base all this on one imperfect test?"

"I don't know what you'd call a perfect one. Anyhow, that child is absolutely honest."

"I hope you are right, Kate; but there are some serious discrepancies—even in to-night's performances. Nothing took place which I could not do sitting in her chair with my hands free."

"But her hands weren't free! If there is any virtue in cotton fibre or steel she remained precisely where we set her at the beginning."

"But to admit that one book was moved from its place is to admit that a force exists unknown to science."

"But what are you going to do? Did you do it? Or did I? Did Clarke reach from where he sat and manipulate the horn? Who brought the old wine-glass from the china-closet? No one entered from the outside—that is certain. And then the things 'Loggy' said?"

"What do you think, Dr. Weissmann?"

Weissmann looked up abstractedly. "If Clarke performed these feats to-night he is wasting his time in any profession but jugglery. You said the cone touched you?" he asked of Morton.

"Several times."

"To do that he must have left his seat."

"I am perfectly sure he did not," replied Kate, firmly.

Morton insisted. "He must have done so, Kate—there is no other explanation of what took place. It was very dark and the rug soft. There is another important point—all of the books came from within a radius of a few feet of the psychic, so that if she were able to rise and free her hands—"

"Which she did not do," answered Weissmann. "She remained precisely where we put her; but we should have nailed Clarke to the floor also."

"How about the child who spoke German?" asked Kate. "Was she—"

Weissmann replied slowly, with a little effort, "I had a little girl of the name Mina who died at eight years of age."

Kate's voice expressed sympathy. "I didn't know that. She must have been a dear. The voice was very sweet. I could almost touch the little thing."

"I do not see how Clarke or any one here knew of my daughter or her name. Clarke may be a mind-reader. The voice did not prove itself."

"Neither was 'Loggy' quite convincing," said Morton. "And yet I cannot understand how those voices were produced. Our imaginations must have been made enormously active by the dark. As scientists we cannot admit the slightest of those movements without the fall of some of our most deeply grounded dogmas. What becomes of Haeckel's dictum—that matter and spirit are inseparable?"

"There is matter and matter," replied Weissmann. "To say that spirit and flesh is inseparable is to claim too much. We can say that we have no proof of such separation, but Crookes and others claim the contrary. It is curious to observe that we to-night have trenched on the very ground Crookes trod. I am very eager now to sit with this girl—the mother and Clarke being excluded."

"Of one thing I am more than half persuaded, and that is that Clarke is a mind-reader; for how else could he know the things which the supposed ghost of my uncle recounted?"

"It is very puzzling," repeated Weissmann, deep-sunk in speculation; and in this abstraction he took himself silently away.

Kate, with an air of saying, "Now that we are alone, let's know your real mind," faced her brother with eyes of wonder. "Morton, what do you honestly think of it? Viola had nothing to do with it, did she?"

"No; but are you absolutely sure Clarke did not get loose and do things?"

"Mort, I was never more alert in my life, and I know he didn't move out of his chair."

"But think what it involves!"

"I don't care what it involves. So far as the senses of touch and hearing go, Clarke remained seated every minute of the time, and I certainly held both his and Mrs. Lambert's hands the whole time while the books were being thrown."

"Well, there you are. Somebody did it." He shrugged his shoulders in an unwonted irritation.

"Why not say the spirits did it all?"

"Because that is unthinkable."

"Sir William Crookes and Dr. Zoellner, you say, believed in these disembodied intelligences—"

"Yes, but they belong to what Haeckel calls the imaginative scientists."

"You needn't quote Haeckel to me, Morton. If I believed what he preaches I would take myself and my children out of the world. I don't see how a man can look a child in the face and say such things. I can't read any of your scientific friends straight along. Their jargon is worse than anything, but I pick out enough to know that they don't believe in anything they can't see, and they won't go out of their way to see things. Do you suppose I'm going to believe that Robbie is nothing but a little animal, and that if he should die his soul would disappear like a vapor?"

"I can only repeat that the converse is unthinkable. There is no room in my philosophy for the re-entrance of the dead."

"Why not? It's all very simple. We're creatures of our surroundings, aren't we? Now, sitting there in the dark to-night, it seemed to me that the people we think of as dead were all about me. It scared me at first; but, really, isn't it the most comforting faith in the world? I've always liked the idea of the Indian's happy 'hunting-grounds'—and this is something like it."

He smiled shrewdly. "That performance to-night and this conversation would make a pretty story to lay before the president of Corlear—now wouldn't it?"

"How do you suppose he will take your going into this investigation?"

"I don't know, but I think he'll 'fire' me instanter."

"Well, let him try it! He wouldn't dare—"

"Oh yes, he would, if he thought I was hurting the institution. See what they did to poor little Combes, who mildly claimed to be able to hypnotize people."

"Yes, but he made himself ridiculous in the papers."

"You mean the papers made him ridiculous. Couldn't they do the same with Weissmann and me? Think of a big, sprawling, sketchy drawing in the Blast, with Weissmann glaring at a strangely beautiful young lady in scanty gown—his hands spread like claws upon the table, while another younger man (myself) catches at a horn floating overhead. Oh yes, there are great possibilities in to-night's entertainment. May I ask you, Mrs. Rice, to be more than usually circumspect?"

"You may, Dr. Serviss."

He rose gravely. "Very good. Now I think you would better go to bed."

"I wish your Mr. Lambert would come."

"So do I. I'm afraid he is going to ignore my summons. Unless I hear from him to-morrow I shall consider him craven or indifferent."

"What will you do then?"

His brows contracted into a frown. "I don't know. She should be freed from Clarke's immediate influence, but I don't see how I can interfere."

"I can't believe that she really cares for him; in fact, from things she said to-night, I think she fears him. He was furiously jealous of you, I could see that. And I must say you gave him cause."

He turned and looked at her in affected amazement. "Where are you heading now?"

She laughed. "Where are you drifting, my boy? I never saw any one more absorbed, and I can't say I blame you; she was lovely. Good-night." And so she left him.

Sitting thus alone in the deep of the night, the flush of his joy at the proof of Viola's innocence grew gray and cold in a profound disbelief in the reality of his experiences. "Did anything really happen?" he asked himself. Returning to the library with intent to study the situation he mused long upon the tumbled books, the horn, the tables, and the chairs. He put himself in Viola's seat in the attempt to conceive of some method whereby even the most skilful magician would be able to pull out tacks, rip stitches, and break tape—and then—more difficult than all, after manipulating the horn, reseat himself and restore his bonds, every tack, to its precise place. And his conversation with "Loggy," most amazing of all, came back to plague him. What could explain that marvellous simulation of his uncle's chuckling laugh?

Yes, Viola was clearly innocent. It was impossible for her to have lifted a hand; that he decided upon finally—and yet it was almost as difficult for Clarke or Mrs. Lambert to have performed all the tricks, "Unless Kate"—he brought himself up short—"in the end, my own sister, is involved in the imposture," he exclaimed, with a sense of bewilderment.

When he dwelt on Viola's delight in her own vindication, and remembered her serene, sweet, trustful glance, a shiver of awe went over him, and the work of saving her, of healing her, seemed greater than the discovery of any new principle; but whenever his keen, definite, analytic mind took up the hit-or-miss absurd caperings of "the spirits" he paced the floor in revolt of their childish chicanery. That the soul survived death he could not for an instant entertain. Every principle of biology, every fibre woven into his system of philosophy repelled the thought. To grant one single claim of the spiritists was disaster. "No, the mother and Clarke are in league, and when the bonds are on one the other acts. I see no other explanation. I distrust Clarke utterly—but the mother is apparently very gentle and candid, and yet—Weissmann may be right. Maternal love is a very powerful emotion. That second voice was like hers. And yet, and yet, to suspect that gentle soul of deliberate deception is a terrible thing. What a world of vulgarity and disease and suspicion it all is! An accursed world, and the history of every medium is filled with these same insane, foolish, absurd doings."

And so he trod in weary circles, returning always to the same point, with an almost audible groan. "Why, why was that charming girl involved in all this uncanny, hellish, destructive business? Clarke claims her. On him her fate depends. Perhaps at this moment her name and hideous reproductions of her face are being printed in all the sensational papers of the city. Oh, that crazy preacher! It may be that he has already made her rescue impossible." And always the dark, disturbing thought came at the end to trouble him. "Can she ever regain a normal relation with the world—even if I should interfere? She should have been freed from this traffic long ago. Can the science of suggestion reach her? Am I already too late?"

The conception that sank deepest and remained most abhorrent in his musings was that conveyed in her own tragic words: "It seems to me I am becoming more and more like a public piano, an instrument on which any one can strum—and the other world is so crowded, you know!"

"If there is any manhood left in Lambert he must assert it or I will throttle Clarke myself," he muttered through clinched teeth. "I ran away two years ago—I evaded my duty yesterday, but I do not intend to do so now. I will not sit by and see that sweet girl's will, her very reason, overthrown by a fanatic preacher eager for notoriety. I will see her again and demand to know from her own lips whether she is in consent to be his wife. I cannot believe it till she tells me so, and then I can decide as to future action."

And at the moment he was comforted by the recollection of something timidly confiding in her parting smile.



XV

VIOLA REVOLTS FROM CLARKE

No sooner were they seated in their carriage than Clarke broke forth in harsh protest. "You must not think of leaving Pratt's house at this time."

"Why not?" asked Viola, roused by the tone of his voice, which was even less considerate than his words.

"Because it will displease him—may possibly alienate him just at a moment when we need him most. He will not consent to be shut out from these test-sittings; on the contrary, he is likely to insist on their taking place in his own library. Furthermore, I don't see why you are in haste to leave so sumptuous an abode."

"Because I hate him, and all connected with him." Her voice was colored with a fierce disgust. "That is the reason, and reason enough."

"You must not let him know that."

"I don't care if he knows it or not. We are not dependent on him or his house."

"Yes, we are! He is most important to all of us until our tests are over and my book in type. I need his indorsement besides. He is very bitter and vindictive with those whom he thinks should be very grateful, and we must not anger him; we can't afford it."

Mrs. Lambert mildly protested. "I'm sure Mr. Pratt will not think of detaining us if father thinks it best for us to go, and I confess I am anxious to get away myself, Tony. He has been very disagreeable lately."

Clarke went on: "We must continue to let him think his advice and aid invaluable till our book is out, then we can cut loose from him. Our policy—"

Rebellion was in Viola's heart as she cuttingly interrupted: "You speak as if we were in league to cheat him of something. You have always told me that my powers were 'dedicated to the good of the world,' but lately you talk as if they were dedicated to your personal advancement in some way. Now which do you really mean?"

He saw his mistake. Once or twice before he had met her complete opposition, and he feared it. His voice suppled, became persuasive. "I mean, Viola, that in entering upon a great contest—one whose issue is to electrify the civilized world—"

"I don't believe it. What does the world care about a little speck of humanity like me? Professor Serviss is nearer right when he says that converting people to any creed is a thankless task. Ask grandfather to let me live my own life. He listens to you. Tell him I'm tired and—"

"He has promised to be easier on you after we have won our battle."

"But I dread the battle—oh, how I dread it! Professor Serviss says we will lose."

Clarke broke in, sharply: "Please don't quote what Serviss says. His view is that of the worldly wise materialist. You should listen to my advice—not his."

"You said you were anxious to have him on the committee."

"Yes, because I thought his name would count, and that he could bring Weissmann—but now I distrust him. He is too bigoted."

As he continued in this strain he stood in dark contrast to Morton, and the girl could not but wince under the revelation he was unconsciously making. "Anthony, you have talked in that strain ever since we came East. Nothing but using people, using people, all the time. You've been constantly running after those who could 'be of use to us!' and I don't like it. Every word you're saying now makes me doubt your sincerity. I was ashamed of you to-night—I am ashamed of you now. How can I respect you when you say things like that?"

He again tacked. "I do it all for the furtherance of our faith. To do our work we must have authority. It is always necessary to make a big stir in the world in order to do good—think of Christ defying the money-changers and making a scene in the temple!"

She pursued her way. "It's the tone of your voice that scares me. You're a different person since we came here—you've been harsh and cruel to me." Her voice choked, and yielding to a flood of doubt she cried out: "I've lost faith in you. This ends it all, I will never marry you! I don't care what my 'guides' say. I daren't trust myself to you—now that's the truth."

The mother was aghast. "Why, Viola Lambert! What a terrible thing to say!"

"I can't help it, mother—that is my decision."

Clarke blundered a third time. "I won't release you! This mood is all the influence of those accursed pagans we have just left. That man Serviss has been an evil influence upon you from the very first. He has no God in his heart. You must keep away from that home—it is destructive."

"It is not!" she retorted, fiercely. "It is beautiful and honest and—sane, and I'm going there as often as they will let me—and I'm going to leave the Pratt house to-morrow! I will not stay there another day."

"There are others to be consulted about this," he grimly answered. "You have tried playing truant before."

She was now in full tide of revolt. "I am going to leave that house if I fall dead in the streets. I am going if 'they' choke me black in the face."

He sneered. "I know where you are going!"

At this moment she hated him and everything he stood for, and her voice was hoarse with her passion. "I don't care what you say or what you do, I will not be hounded and driven around like a slave by you or Simeon Pratt any longer. I'm going to have a little life of my own if 'they' tear me in pieces for it."

This outburst, so much more intense than any which had preceded it, alarmed Clarke and appalled Mrs. Lambert, who took her daughter in her arm with soothing words and caresses. "There, there, dearie! Don't worry—don't excite yourself. Father will not insist on your doing anything that will be harmful. He will protect you."

The girl, sobbing in reaction, bowed to the maternal bosom, feeling once more her own helplessness, receiving no help from her mother's sympathy, which was merely superficial. Her only hope of release lay in the strong, bright, self-reliant, humorous people she had just left, those to whom her grandfather and his "band" were less than shadows. They alone could save her from the despairing madness which she felt creeping upon her like a beast in the night. Her nerves, strung to dangerous tension, gave away utterly, and Clarke, realizing this, ceased to chide, and the ride ended without another word.

Pratt, who had been waiting for hours with the angry impatience of senility, met them at the door, truculent as a terrier. "What time o' night do you call this?" he asked, with insulting inflection.

Mrs. Lambert answered: "I'm very sorry, but we had a sitting, and it took longer—"

"A sitting!" He faced Viola. "What did you do that for? I told you I didn't want any sittings given unless I was present, and you promised not to give any."

"I did not!" she replied, lifting a tear-stained but imperious face to him.

"Well, Clarke did."

Clarke hastily interposed: "The 'chief control' asked for it—said he wanted to talk to some of those present."

"I don't care what the 'chief control' said—"

Viola, thoroughly roused, now faced him, pale and scornful. "What right have you to ask where I've been or what I've done? I am not your servant—nor one of your poor relatives. You seem to forget that. I will not be your guest another day! I'd leave this house this instant if I could. I came here against my wish, and I will not be insulted by you any longer. I wish I had never seen you." And with haughty step she started to pass him.

He put out a hand to stay her. "Hold on, now!"

With flashing eyes and a voice that smote him like a whip, she cried out, "Leave me alone, please!" He fell back against the wall, and she passed on and up the stairway, leaving him leaning there in dismay, his jaw lax.

The mother hastily followed, and as the door closed behind them Viola turned with blazing eyes. "This is horrible—disgraceful! I hope you enjoy being treated like that! How can you endure it? How can you ask me to endure it? If Anthony Clarke possessed one shred of real manhood—But he hasn't. He's so selfishly bent on his own plans he's willing to let me suffer anything. I'm done with him, mother. You needn't try to find excuse for him. I don't see how I endured him so long. He must never touch me again."

"Don't do anything rash, child."

"Will you submit to more insult? You can stay on till you are ordered out of the house if you like, but I will not!"

"But you know they advise it."

The girl turned, a new tone in her voice. "There, now, mother, we come back to that again! I'm tired of hearing that. If they insist on our staying here I will be sure they are the voices of devils and not those they claim to be. I don't believe my father would ask me to stay in a house where the very servants sniff at us. I don't believe he would let Anthony make use of me in this way. Professor Serviss calls our faith a delusion, and to-night I almost hope he's right. I have lost the spirit of the martyr, and everything seems foolish to me."

Mrs. Lambert regarded her daughter with horror. "Child, some earth-bound spirit has surely taken possession of you."

"I hope it will stay till to-morrow—till I get out of this house," she replied, and went to her own room without a good-night kiss, leaving her mother hurt and dismayed.

A few moments later Clarke knocked at the sitting-room door. "Julia, here is a message I want you to give to Viola."

As she opened to him he faced her, pale and tremulous, all his anger, all his resolution gone. "She was unjust to me," he said, humbly; "take her this." He extended a folded leaf of paper in a hand that partook of the pallor of his face.

"You poor boy," she exclaimed, her heart wrung by his suffering, "you mustn't mind what she said—it was only a girlish pet."

"Mother," he cried, passionately, "to lose her now would kill me. She is my hope, my stay, my God! She has stabbed me to the heart to-night. Did she mean it? She can't mean it!"

She patted him on the shoulder. "Go to bed, laddie, it's only a mood. She will be all sunshine to-morrow. It's only a reaction from a wearisome day—be patient and don't worry."

"She tortured me deliberately," he went on, wildly. "She let that man take her hand. She smiled at him in a way that set my brain on fire. I tried to be calm. I didn't intend to speak harshly, but I wanted to kill him when he said good-night to her. May God eternally damn his soul if he tries to steal her from me!"

She recoiled from his fury. "Tony! What are you saying?"

"I mean it! Do you think I will submit to his treachery? I told him she was mine, and yet he took her hand—he leaned to her—he looked into her face." His eyes blazed with such wild light that the gentle woman shrank and shivered.

"Tony, you are letting your imagination run away with you. Go to bed this instant," she commanded, in a voice that trembled.

He went away at last, weeping, miserably maudlin, almost incoherent, and when she closed and locked the door upon him she dropped into a chair, and for the first time since her husband's death gave way to tears of bewilderment and despair.



XVI

THE HOUSE OF DISCORD

Surely Simeon's house that night was a place of tormenting and tumult—the meeting-place of spirits whose dispositions were to evil fully inclined, and of mortals whose natures were upon the edge of combat. Viola, in full revolt, would not even permit her mother to come to her. Clarke, in an agony of love and hate, paced his room or sat in dejected heap before his grate. Mrs. Lambert, realizing that something sorrowful was advancing upon her, lay awake a long time hoping her daughter would relent and steal in to kiss her good-night, but she did not, and at last the waters of sleep rolled in to submerge and carry away her cares.