Part 38 (1/2)

”I will be as well as ever as soon as my blood begins to circulate,”

she bravely answered, and his touch quickened her pulse miraculously.

As soon as Weissmann had finished taking his notes and measurements, he locked the door of the library and joined them all in the dining-room, where they were sipping coffee and nibbling cake. Morton was sitting beside Viola (who had entirely regained her girlish lightness of mood), and was chafing her cold hand in the effort to restore the circulation as well as to remove the deep mark the silken thread had made about her wrist.

”We shall be obliged to shut out all young men from our committee,”

the old scientist jocularly remarked, as he stood looking down at them. ”Lovely psychics like you would put the whole American Academy of Science in disorder.”

Clarke, raging with jealous fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent mood. ”Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?”

”Spooks!” answered the old man, with cheerful promptness.

Clarke reeled before this laconic admission. ”What! You agree? You admit the agency of spirits?”

”Certainly--unless I say Miss Lambert wriggled herself out of her skin, which would not be nice of me, or that you are the greatest ventriloquist in the world. No, I prefer to compliment the spirits.”

Clarke's face darkened. The old man's face and voice were too jocose.

”I see you do not value our wonderful experiences to-night.”

Viola, pinching her sleeve about her wrist, looked up roguishly. ”I couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And if I did, how could I get the tacks back without a hammer?”

”Precisely. You would be more burglarious than the ghosts which walk through the key-holes,” he answered.

”And the little girl who spoke German--who was she?” asked Kate.

The hour that followed was a delicious one for the young people, for they had come at last to some sweet and subtle understanding. As she recovered the use of her limbs Viola glowed with joy of Morton's change of att.i.tude towards her. He, on his part, was puzzled by this mood. It was as if she had been vindicated to herself--liberated from some dead body of doubt.

Clarke glowered in silence; disapproving, with manifest disdain, the levity of the scientists, and resenting bitterly Viola's growing trust and confidence in Serviss. Each moment his anger took on heat, and he found it hard to reply even to his hostess, who tried to interest him in a deeper discussion of the evening's marvels. He seemed to have but one desire--to get away and to take Viola with him.

”Tell me,” said Viola to Morton, ”did papa speak to you?”

”A voice purporting to be your father spoke a few words.”

”He is very nice. Didn't you think so?”

”The voice was very gentle and refined, and expressed a very tender regard for you.”

She sighed. ”I have never heard my father's voice, for he always comes when I am in my deepest trances. They say that I will be permitted some day to hear all the voices through the cone--I only hear them now in an interior way.”

”Do you really suffer as you seem to do?” he asked, the echo of his pity still in his tone.

”Not after I am really gone. Did I groan?”

”Horribly! My heart was filled with remorse--”

”I'm sorry. It doesn't really hurt me--physically. You see I am perfectly well again. And yet I hate more and more to give myself up.

I can't explain it, but I seem to be losing more and more of _myself_--that is the thought that scares me. I hate to think of being so helpless. It seems to me as if I were becoming like--like a hotel piano--for any one to strum on--I mean that any one in the other world--It is so crowded over there, you know!” Her brows drew together in momentary disgust.

”I _don't_ know, but it must be so if all the myriads of past humanity are living there. If I had my way you would never sit again,” he declared, most fervently.

”I wouldn't mind so much,” she went on, ”if I were not marked out for suspicion--if people would only talk to me of nice earthly things part of the time as they would to any other girl--but they never do.