o go out. I want air. If I could only go to sleep and forget
it. The drawing-room furniture is scattered all over the house."

"Now the second sitting:

"'It is writing.' (The stick.) 'It is writing, but the water washed it
away. All of it, not a trace.' 'If only the pocketbook were not lost.
Car-tickets and letters. It will be terrible if the letters are found.'
'Hawkins may have it. The curtain was much safer.' 'That part's safe
enough, unless it made a hole in the floor above.'"

"Oh, if you're going to read a lot of irrelevant material--"

"Irrelevant nothing! Wake up, Horace! But remember this. I'm not
explaining the physical phenomena. We'll never do that. It wasn't
extraordinary, as such things go. Our little medium in a trance
condition has read poor Clara's mind. It's all here, all that Clara
knew and nothing that she didn't know. A mind-reader, friend Horace. And
Heaven help me when I marry her!"

********

As I have said, the Neighborhood Club ended its investigations with
this conclusion, which I believe is properly reached. It is only fair to
state that there are those among us who have accepted that theory in the
Wells case, but who have preferred to consider that behind both it and
the physical phenomena of the seances there was an intelligence which
directed both, an intelligence not of this world as we know it. Both
Herbert and Alice Robinson are now pronounced spiritualists, although
Miss Jeremy, now Mrs. Sperry, has definitely abandoned all investigative
work.

Personally, I have evolved no theory. It seems beyond dispute that
certain individuals can read minds, and that these same, or other
so-called "sensitives," are capable of liberating a form of invisible
energy which, however, they turn to no further account than the useless
ringing of bells, moving of small tables, and flinging about of divers
objects.

To me, I admit, the solution of the Wells case as one of mind-reading is
more satisfactory than explanatory. For mental waves remain a mystery,
acknowledged, as is electricity, but of a nature yet unrevealed.
Thoughts are things. That is all we know.

Mrs. Dane, I believe, had suspected the solution from the start.

The Neighborhood Club has recently disbanded. We tried other things, but
we had been spoiled. Our Kipling winter was a failure. We read a play or
two, with Sperry's wife reading the heroine, and the rest of us taking
other parts. She has a lovely voice, has Mrs. Sperry. B