me, but am I
right in thinking--' And then he would give a little lecture on his own
account, and look around for the approval of the audience. I should have
flung things at him if I had been the purple velvet lady. It was so
obvious that he was not desiring _her_ information, but merely wishful to
air his own. There was a text on the wall which said, 'We talk abundance
here,' and when I pointed out to Sybil how true it was, she wasn't a bit
pleased, and said it didn't mean what I thought _in the least_. But she
wouldn't explain what it did mean. After the lecture, the purple velvet
lady held things--jewelry chiefly--that people in the audience sent up to
her, and described their owners, and where they'd got the things from.
There was quite a lot of family history, and people's characteristics and
virtues and failings, and very, _very_ private things made public, but no
one seemed to mind."

"That's the odd thing about those people," said Doctor Hilary
thoughtfully. "Disclosing their innermost thoughts, feelings, and
so-called experiences, seems an absolute mania with them. And the more
public the disclosure the better they are pleased. But go on, Miss
Devereux."

"Well," said Trix, "at last she began describing a sort of Cleopatra
lady, and--and rather vivid love scenes, and--and things like that. When
she'd ended, the bracelet turned out to belong to a little dowdy woman
looking like a meek mouse. I thought the purple velvet lady would have
been really upset and mortified at her mistake. But she wasn't in the
least. She just smiled sweetly, and returned the bracelet to the owner,
and said that the dowdy little woman had been Cleopatra in a former
incarnation. Of course when she began on _that_ tack, I saw the kind of
lecture I'd really let myself in for, and I knew I'd no business to be in
the place at all, so I made Sybil take me away. It was nearly the end,
and she didn't mind, because she missed the silver collection. But she
talked to me about it the whole of tea-time, and she really believed it
all," sighed Trix pathetically.

Miss Tibbutt looked quite shocked.

"Oh, but, my dear, she couldn't really."

"She did," nodded Trix.

Miss Tibbutt appealed helplessly to Father Dormer.

"Why do people believe such extraordinary things?" she demanded almost
wrathfully.

Father Dormer laughed. "That's a question I cannot pretend to answer. But
I suppose that if people reject the truth, and yet want to believe
so