-fact tone, he added, "Henry, turn the light a little lower."

As the attendant glided to his task, Serviss was mightily moved to
rise in his seat and cry out against the foolish, profaning business.
They were putting the girl into the exact attitude of the paid
trickster. At college he had attended a few of these seances, where
vulgar and immoral women had furthered their trade; and to see Viola,
whom he still believed to be essentially sweet, or at least
reclaimable, thrown into this most dubious posture, disgusted and
angered him. "But I am an uninvited guest. My rising would precipitate
a scene, involving Viola," he reasoned, and so kept his seat, though
his hands clinched and his teeth set with the effort at control.

Some one commenced to play softly upon a harp, and a little sigh like
a breeze passed over the group. The women had begun to respond to the
manager's emotional appeal. "I can feel them gathering," he called,
softly, from his seat beside the motionless girl. "The spirit host
are about us. I can almost hear the rustle of their wings."

The harpist stopped abruptly, and an echoing strain of faint music
continued to sound, seemingly from the ceiling--a fairy harp
exquisitely clear. "That is my Adele," announced Clarke, in a voice so
convincing in its tone of satisfied longing that the women of his
audience again rustled with ecstasy.

"I think he is beautiful!" exclaimed one.

"A voice is whispering to me," Clarke continued. "It is asking for
some one--I cannot quite make out. Who is it? Again, please. Morton
Serviss?" His voice rose in surprise. "He is not here. You are surely
mistaken. Certainly, I will ask. Is Professor Serviss here?"

Serviss replied, with a slight note of annoyance in his voice, "Yes, I
am here."

Again the little group shivered with excitement--not because they were
acquainted with the name and fame of the scientist, but because they
anticipated some especially wonderful manifestation of the psychic's
power. Serviss, irritated and puzzled, waited in silence.

Clarke's voice trembled with his effort to appear calm as he said:
"Professor Serviss, I am glad to welcome you. Won't you please come
forward? The 'control' desires it."

For a full minute, in dead silence, Serviss debated the matter, then
rose to comply. Mrs. Lambert met him with cordial hand, saying, in a
whisper: "We did not know you were coming; but they knew. They want
you closer to the manifestation."

He, si