o face with himself. His
heart had been touched, his imagination fired by Viola, hence his
discontent, his heat of anger towards the unlovely side of her life.
It was the memory of her that had kept him half-hearted to the claims
of several comely women of his circle whom Kate had advocated.

And now his mind (which ought to have been given up entirely to
bacteria) was filled with the face and fortunes of one who was either
living a lie or suffering from an abnormally developed brain. Singular
and sad predicament for a man who had determined to move slowly and
with calm foresight. Furthermore, the whole world in which his love
lived and moved was repellent, silly, and morbid. Since his meeting
with her he had tried to read some of the journals devoted to her
faith, and had found them incredibly inane--smudgily printed, slovenly
of phrase, and filled with messages from Aristotle, Columbus, and
Confucius, which would have been discouraging in a boy of twelve years
old. The phraseology, the cant terms, nauseated him. The
advertisements of "Psychics," "World-famous Mediums," "Palmists,"
"Horologists," and only the devil himself knows what else, filled him
with disgust, added to his already poor opinion of sick humanity. Of
these Viola now formed a part--as an actress shares the envy, the
brag, the selfish, blatant struggle for success which is reflected in
the advertising columns of dramatic journals. He ran down each column
of "display ads" of _The World of Spirit_, timorously, almost
expecting to see a notice of "the marvellous psychic Miss Viola
Lambert, the mountain seeress"--and so on.

On deeper thought he found these papers shrewdly contrived to take
human beings at their weakest point, their most unguarded moment; they
had the boldness of the juggler who knows the blind spot in the eyes
of his spectators. They occupied a field apart from all other
periodicals in the world. Science, literature, and art concerned them
only so far as they touched upon, illuminated, or strengthened faith
in "the farther shore." They were as special as a trade-journal--far
more so, indeed, for the _Boot and Shoe News_ prints occasional
reviews of books, and some admirable stories may be found within its
pages side by side with notes on "Burnishers" and stitching-machines.

The accounts of circles, sittings, and "seances"--good Lord, how he
hated that word!--were almost comic, and yet to think of Viola and her
gracious mother concerned