h what in an ordinary person would be a sniffle. Then
suddenly she drew nearer to McGeorge and talked in a torrent about true
love. She doubted if it existed anywhere. Spirits were no more faithful
than humans.

This, for McGeorge, was more difficult than the silence; all the while,
he told me, his thoughts were going back to the scene in the bath-room.
He had no security that it wouldn't be repeated and with a far different
conclusion. He had a passing impulse to ask Jannie to call off her
subliminal thugs; the phrasing is my own. There was no doubt in his
disordered mind that it was she who, at the instigation of the elder
Meekers, was trying to remove him in the effort to secure Wallace
Esselmann.

She dissolved presently into tears, and cried that she was the most
miserable girl in existence. She dropped an absurd confection of a
handkerchief on the floor, and he leaned over, returning it to her.
Jannie's head drooped against his shoulder, and, to keep her from
sliding to the floor, he was obliged to sit beside her and support her
with an arm. It had been a temporary measure, but Jannie showed no signs
of shifting her weight; and, from wishing every moment for Ena's
appearance, he now prayed desperately for her to stay away.

McGeorge said that he heard the girl murmur something that sounded like,
"Why shouldn't I?" Her face was turned up to him in a way that had but
one significance for maiden or medium. She was, he reminded me, Ena's
sister, about to become his own; there was a clinging, seductive scent
about her, too, and a subtle aroma of Benedictine; and, well, he did
what was expected.

However, no sooner had he kissed her than her manner grew inexplicable.
She freed herself from him, and sat upright in an expectant, listening
attitude. Her manner was so convincing that he straightened up and gazed
about the parlor. There was absolutely no unusual sight or sound; the
plain, heavy table in the center of the room was resting as solidly as
if it had never playfully cavorted at the will of the spirits, the
chairs were back against the walls, the miniature Rock of Ages, on the
mantel, offered its testimony to faith.

One insignificant detail struck his eye--a weighty cane of Mr. Meeker's
stood in an angle of the half-opened door to the hall, across the floor
from where Jannie and he were sitting.

III

After a little, with nothing apparently following, the girl's expectancy
faded; her expression grew pet