hand seized a pencil
in the middle of the table and reproduced the signature."

"Could you see this hand?" Miller asked.

"Not in this case; but at a sitting which followed this, during such
time as I sat beside the psychic and controlled one hand, I plainly saw
the supernumerary arm and hand dart forth and seize a pencil. I saw a
hand very plainly cross my knee and grasp me by the forearm. All of this
has its bearing upon this very curious phenomenon of the reproduction of
'E. A's.' youthful signature, which remained very puzzling to us all."

"But did you not say that 'E. A.' at times represented an opposing
will?" questioned Fowler--"that he disputed certain passages with Blake,
and that he finally carried his point in opposition to every mind in the
circle?"

"Yes, that happened several times, and was all very convincing at the
time. And yet this opposition may have been more apparent than real. It
may have concerned our conscious wills only; our subconscious selves may
have been in accord, working together as one."

Fowler was a bit irritated. "If you are disposed to make the
subconscious will all-powerful and omniscient, nothing can be proved. It
seems to me an evasion. However, let me ask how you would explain away a
spirit form carrying the voice, the features, and the musical genius of
'E. A.'?"

"Well, there is the teleplastic theory of Albert de Rochas. He claims to
have been able not merely to cause a hypnotized subject to exteriorize
her astral self, but to mould this vapory substance as a sculptor models
wax. So I can imagine that a momentary radiant apparition might have
been created in the image of my sister or 'David' or 'E. A.'"

"To my thinking, that is more complicated and incredible than the spirit
hypothesis," objected Fowler.

"Nothing can be more incredible to me than the spirit hypothesis," I
replied. "But, then, everything is incredible in the last analysis. I
am the more disposed to believe in the teleplastic theory, for the
reason that I have recently had an opportunity to witness a particularly
incredible thing: the materialization of a complete human form outside
the cabinet and beside the psychic--a phenomenon which has a special
bearing upon the matter of identity which we are discussing. The sitting
took place in a small private house here in the city. The psychic in the
case was a young business man who is careful not to advertise his power.
For four years he has been holding s