I'll tell you,
Bill, something which I've never told you before."

"Yes," he said, with a strange sinking of the heart. "What's that,
Bubbles?"

"You know that Persian magician, or Wise Man, whom certain people in
London went cracked over last spring?"

"The man you _would_ go and see?"

"Yes, of course I mean that man. Well, when he saw me he made his
interpreter tell me that he had a special message for me--"

Bubbles was leaning forward now, her hands resting on Bill's shoulders.
"I wonder if I ought to tell you all he said," she whispered. "Perhaps I
ought to keep it secret."

"Of course you ought to tell me! What was the message?"

"He said that I had rent the veil, wilfully, and that I was often
surrounded by the evil demons who had come rushing through; that only by
fasting and praying could I hope to drive them back, and close the rent
which I had made."

"I shouldn't allow myself to think too much of what he said," said Bill
hoarsely. "And yet--and yet, Bubbles? There may have been something in
it--."

He spoke very earnestly, poor boy.

"Of course there was a great deal in it. But they're not always demons,"
she said slowly. "Now, for instance, as I sit here, where good, simple
people have been praying together for hundreds of years, the atmosphere
is kind and holy, not wicked and malignant, as it was last night."

She waited a moment, then began again, "I remember going into a cottage
not long ago, where an old man holds a prayer meeting every Wednesday
evening--he's a Dissenter--you know the sort of man I mean? Well, I felt
extraordinarily comforted, and _left alone_."

Her voice sank to a low whisper. "I suppose"--there came a little catch
in her voice--"I suppose, Bill, that I am what people used to call
'possessed.' In old days I should have been burnt as a witch. Sometimes
I feel as if a battle were going on round me and for me--a battle
between good and evil spirits. That was what I was feeling last night,
before you came up. I couldn't rest--I couldn't stay in bed. I felt as
if I must move about to avoid--"

"To avoid what?" he asked.

"--Their clutchings."

Her voice dropped. "I've been in old houses where I seemed to know
everything about every ghost!"--she tried to smile. "People don't change
when they what we call die. If they're dull and stupid, they remain dull
and stupid. But here in Wyndfell Hall, I'm frightened. I'm frightened of
Varick--I feel as if there were something s