words. That died
away, and the thin, bright tones of a child followed; then a storm of
knocking, and blowing on a tin trumpet.

"A very successful sitting. I saw Jannie directly afterward, and the
heroic young medium was positively livid from exhaustion. She had a shot
of Benedictine and then another, and Mr. Meeker half carried her up to
bed. I stayed in the kitchen till the confusion was over, and Albert
came out and was pointedly rude. If you want to know what's thought of
you in a house, watch the young.

"Ena was flighty, too; it irritated her to have me close by--highly
strung. She cried for no reason at all and bit her finger-nails to
shreds. There was a fine platinum chain about her neck, with a diamond
pendant, I had never seen before, and for a long while she wouldn't tell
me where it had come from. The name, Wallace Esselmann, finally emerged
from her hints and evasions. He was young and rich, he had a waxed
mustache, and the favor of the Meekers generally.

"Have you ever been jealous?" McGeorge asked abruptly. Not in the degree
he indicated, I replied; however, I comprehended something of its
possibilities of tyrannical obsession. "It was like a shovelful of
burning coals inside me," he asserted. "I was ready to kill this
Esselmann or Ena and then myself. I raved like a maniac; but it
evidently delighted her, for she took off the chain and relented.

"At first," McGeorge said, "if you remember, I was terrified at the
thought of living forever; but I had got used to that truth, and the
blessings of spiritualism dawned upon me. No one could ever separate Ena
and me. The oldest India religions support that----"

"With the exception," I was obliged to put in, "that all progression is
toward nothingness, suspension, endless calm."

"We have improved on that," he replied. "The joys that await us are
genuine twenty-two carat--the eternal companionship of loving ones, soft
music, summer----"

"Indestructible lips under a perpetual moon."

He solemnly raised a hand.

"They are all about you," he said; "they hear you; take care. What
happened to me will be a warning."

"Materialize the faintest spirit," I told him, "produce the lightest
knock on that Fyfe table, and I'll give you a thousand dollars for the
cause." He expressed a contemptuous superiority to such bribery. "By
your own account," I reminded him, "the Meekers gave this Esselmann
every advantage. Why?"

McGeorge's face grew somber.

"I saw