s
honesty and his strong personality. He was to her as a resolute priest
to a timid penitent; he had led her forward, supported by his own
conviction and his extremely steady will, until she had begun to feel
at home in this amazing new world, and eager to make proselytes.

Then Laurie had appeared, and almost immediately a dread had seized
her that she could neither explain nor understand. She had attempted a
little tentative conversation on the point with dearest Maud, but
dearest Maud had appeared so entirely incapable of understanding her
scruples that she had said no more. But her inexplicable anxiety had
already reached such a point that she had determined to say a word to
Laurie on the subject. This had been done, without avail; and now a
new step forward was to be made.

* * * * *

As to of what this step consisted she was perfectly aware.

The "controls," she believed--the spirits that desired to
communicate--had a series of graduated steps by which the
communications could be made, from mere incoherent noises (as a man
may rap a message from one room to another), through appearances, also
incoherent and intangible, right up to the final point of assuming
visible tangible form, and of speaking in an audible voice. This
process, she believed, consisted first in a mere connection between
spirit and matter, and finally passed into an actual assumption of
matter, molded into the form of the body once worn by the spirit on
earth. For nearly all of this process she had had the evidence of her
own senses; she had received messages, inexplicable to her except on
the hypothesis put forward, from departed relations of her own; she
had seen lights, and faces, and even figures formed before her eyes,
in her own drawing-room; but she had not as yet, though dearest Maud
had been more fortunate, been able to handle and grasp such figures,
to satisfy the sense of touch, as well as of sight, in proof of the
reality of the phenomenon.

Yes; she was satisfied even with what she had seen; she had no manner
of doubt as to the theories put before her by Mr. Vincent; yet she
shrank (and she scarcely knew why) from that final consummation which
it was proposed to carry out if possible that evening. But the
shrinking centered round some half-discerned danger to Laurie Baxter
rather than to herself.

* * * * *

It was these kinds of thoughts that beset her as she wal