Viola to Morton, "did papa speak to you?"

"A voice purporting to be your father spoke a few words."

"He is very nice. Didn't you think so?"

"The voice was very gentle and refined, and expressed a very tender
regard for you."

She sighed. "I have never heard my father's voice, for he always comes
when I am in my deepest trances. They say that I will be permitted
some day to hear all the voices through the cone--I only hear them now
in an interior way."

"Do you really suffer as you seem to do?" he asked, the echo of his
pity still in his tone.

"Not after I am really gone. Did I groan?"

"Horribly! My heart was filled with remorse--"

"I'm sorry. It doesn't really hurt me--physically. You see I am
perfectly well again. And yet I hate more and more to give myself up.
I can't explain it, but I seem to be losing more and more of
_myself_--that is the thought that scares me. I hate to think of being
so helpless. It seems to me as if I were becoming like--like a hotel
piano--for any one to strum on--I mean that any one in the other
world--It is so crowded over there, you know!" Her brows drew together
in momentary disgust.

"I _don't_ know, but it must be so if all the myriads of past humanity
are living there. If I had my way you would never sit again," he
declared, most fervently.

"I wouldn't mind so much," she went on, "if I were not marked out for
suspicion--if people would only talk to me of nice earthly things part
of the time as they would to any other girl--but they never do.
Everybody wants to talk to me about death and spirits--"

"That's what gives edge to my remorse," he interrupted. "Here am I
doing the very things you abhor. To think that we who have made such
a protest against your slavery could not allow you one free evening! I
will not say another word on these uncanny subjects."

"But I _want_ to talk of them to _you_! I wanted to tell you all about
myself that day we rode up to the mine--but I could not."

"I wish you had. It might have made a great deal of difference in your
life--and mine. I have been thinking of that ride to-night, as we sat
in the darkness. If I could, I would keep you as girlish, as gay, as
you were that day. This business is all a desecration to me. I love to
think of you as you were then--when you laughed back at me in the
rain. I wish we were both there this minute."

She smiled. "You forget the time of night!" Her face grew wistful.
"I've been getting homesick