ng new and harsh. She sat quite still while he filled his pipe
and lit it, waited until the soothing flow of smoke through its stem
had softened his face. He began, sadly: "The girl has gone beyond our
interference, Kate; and if she weren't so pretty, if I hadn't seen
her when she was wholesome and altogether charming, I would not have
wasted this evening on her. To-night's doings were unforgivable."

"Did she give you a sitting?"

"No, but they were in the midst of a _seance_"--he spoke this word
with infinite disgust--"and the usher, mistaking me for an invited
guest, thrust me into the very centre of the circle."

"How lucky! I wish I had been there."

"Well, that's as you look at it. When I realized what was going on I
wanted to leave, and, I repeat, had the chief actress been an old hag
or the usual sloven who plays this game, I would have fled; but she
was as beautiful as a statue as she lay there, professedly in deep
trance."

"You're sure it was Viola?"

"I wish there were a doubt! Yes, she was there, surrounded by a group
of Pratt's friends, giving a _performance_." This word, too, expressed
his contempt, his pain. "She went the whole length--lent herself to
the cheapest kind of jugglery, playing with horrible adroitness upon
the emotions of a lot of bereaved men and women. It was revolting,
Kate. It shakes one's faith in humanity to see such a girl in such a
position--and that nice-appearing old mother sat there serene as a
tabby-cat while her daughter bamboozled a dozen open-faced ninnies."

"Tell me exactly what happened; I can't share your horror till I know
what the girl actually did."

He approached the details with a grimace.

"First of all, imagine a little half-circle of well-dressed men and
women, in a big drawing-room, enclosing a girl lying on a low chair
under a single gas-jet, and a man standing beside her speechifying."

"That was Clarke, of course."

"Of course. Then imagine the light turned down, and the usual floating
guitar--in the dark, of course--and rappings and whispers and the
touch of hands--all in the dark. Then imagine--this will make you
laugh--some kind of horn or megaphone of tin, that rambled around
invisibly, distributing voices of loved ones here and there like
sweetmeats out of a cornucopia--"

"You mean the spirits _spoke_ through that thing?"

"That's what they all believed."

"But you don't think the girl--"

"Who else? Some of the voices were women's and