tes, we'd got into spiritualism and all that
sort of thing. He is evidently a believer in it, calls himself an
occultist."

"But do you mean to tell me he said souls could be exchanged at will?
Come, Julian?"

"I won't say that. But he set no limit at all to what can be done. He
declares that if people seriously set themselves to develop the latent
powers that lie hidden within them, they can do almost anything. Only
they must be en rapport. Each must respond closely, definitely, to the
other. Now, you and I are as much in sympathy with one another as any
two men in London, I suppose."

"Surely!"

"Then half the battle's won--according to Marr."

"You are joking."

"He wasn't. He would declare that, with time and perseverance, we could
accomplish an exchange of souls."

Valentine laughed.

"Well, but how?"

Julian laughed too.

"Oh, it seems absurd--but he'd tell us to sit together."

"Well, we are sitting together now."

"No; at a table, I mean."

"Table-turning!" Valentine cried, with a sort of contempt. "That is for
children, and for all of us at Christmas, when we want to make fools of
ourselves."

"Just what I am inclined to think. But Marr--and he's really a very
smart, clever chap, Val--denies it. He swears it is possible for two
people who sit together often to get up a marvellous sympathy, which
lasts on even when they are no longer sitting. He says you can even
see your companion's thoughts take form in the darkness before your
eyes, and pass in procession like living things."

"He must be mad."

"Perhaps. I don't know. If he is, he can put his madness to you very
lucidly, very ingeniously."

Valentine stroked the white back of Rip meditatively with his foot.

"You have never sat, have you?" he asked.

"Never."

"Nor I. I have always thought it an idiotic and very dull way of wasting
one's time. Now, what on earth can a table have to do with one's soul?"

"I don't know. What is one's soul?"

"One's essence, I suppose; the inner light that spreads its rays outward
in actions, and that is extinguished, or expelled, at the hour of death."

"Expelled, I think."

"I think so too. That which is so full of strange power cannot surely die
so soon. Even my soul, so frigid, so passionless, has, you say, held you
back from sins like a leash of steel, And I did not even try to forge the
steel. If we could exchange souls, would yours hold me back in the same
way?"

"No doubt."

"I wond