other has come to rest upon her system of deceit. The thought is
horrible."

"It is quite as bad at that," returned Britt. "You see, the mother has
been for years in close daily communion--as she supposes--with her
husband, her little son, and others of her dead. Half of her daily
life is in these joys, the other half in her daughter. There stood the
wall that stopped me. I couldn't express my doubt to the mother. I
couldn't apply the clamps. I simply withdrew. I do not intend to
pursue the matter to a finish so long as the mother is alive."

Morton's face was clouded with pain. "Let us drop the Lamberts as a
subject; they are too distressing, especially as I see no way of
helping them. When do you return?"

Kate acquiesced in her brother's diversion of the stream of talk, but
an hour later, as Britt was about to go, she seized the opportunity to
say: "You must not fail to take me to see this girl. I have never been
so excited about any one in my life. Can't you take me to-morrow?"

"I am entirely at your service. Suppose I call at four--will that do?"

"Perfectly. I'm very grateful to you."

"I hope you won't come to curse me for it. I warn you, the girl is
damnably convincing. She may enamour you."

"No fear of that," she cried, in defiant brightness. "I'm not so
easily fooled."

She re-entered the library with the flush of an excited conviction in
her face. "Morton, I feel as if I had taken part in the dissection of
a human soul."

He threw up his hand with a gesture of pain and despair. "Don't! I can
only hope that girl is utterly bad. Otherwise she is the sport of
devils. Help me forget the whole uncanny business."

"You're wrong," she said, firmly. "It is just such men as you and Dr.
Weissmann who should snatch the pearl of truth from this bucket of
mental mire."

"That's a very good phrase, Kate--if only I was sure of the pearl."

There really was no way out for him. His mind utterly discredited the
phenomena Viola claimed to produce, and that left but one other
interpretation. She was a trickster and auto-hypnotist--uncanny as the
fabled women who were fair on one side but utterly foul and corrupt on
the other. In his musing her splendid, glowing, physical self drew
near, and when he looked into her sweet, clear eyes his brain reeled
with doubt of his doubt. If there were any honest eyes in the world,
she was innocent, and a tortured victim, as Kate had so quickly
decided; and his plain duty was t