s.
She felt that he was of a different world; he knew that the world was all
one, though partitioned off by artificial barriers, but he could not
correct her view.

She clung to him for a moment after his lips left hers, then released
herself from his clasp and moved back into the room, her face averted.
Was it to hide a blush? Orme did not ask himself, but respecting her
reticence of spirit, silently closed the panel and was again in darkness.

For a time he stood there quietly. His back was against the wall,--his
hands easily touched the paneling that shut him off from the room. He
wondered what this secret place was for, and taking a match from his
pocket, he lighted it.

The enclosure seemed to extend all the way across the side of the room.
Farther along, lying on the floor and standing against the wall, were
contrivances of which at first he could make nothing--poles, pieces of
tin, and--were those masks, heaped in the corner? From a row of pegs hung
long robes--white and black.

The truth flashed into Orme's mind. He was in Madame Alia's ghost-closet!

CHAPTER XII

POWER OF DARKNESS

To Orme the next half-hour was very long. He seated himself upon the
floor of the closet and ate the sandwich which the clairvoyant had
brought him. Occasionally he could hear her moving about the apartment.

"Poor charlatan!" he thought. "She is herself a 'good sort.' I suppose
she excuses the sham of her profession on the ground that it deceives
many persons into happiness."

He struck another match and looked again at the ghostly paraphernalia
about him. Near him hung a black robe with a large hood. He crushed one
of the folds in his hands and was surprised to discover how thin it was
and into how small space it could be compressed. Not far away stood
several pairs of large slippers of soft black felt. The white robes were
also of thinnest gossamer--flimsy stuff that swayed like smoke when he
breathed toward it.

By the light of a third match he looked more carefully at the other
apparatus. There was a large pair of angel-wings, of the conventional
shape. The assortment of masks was sufficiently varied for the
representation of many types of men and women of different ages.

The match burned down to his fingers, and again he sat in darkness,
wondering at the elaborateness of the medium's outfit. She was a fraud,
but he liked her--yes, pitied her--and he felt inclined to excuse in so
far as he could. For the k