Presently I was
admitted and found an old woman in a plain loose dark dress: a
sort of old Irish peasant woman with an air of humour and
audacious power. I was still kept waiting, for she was deep in
conversation with a woman visitor. I strayed through folding doors
into the next room and stood, in sheer idleness of mind, looking
at a cuckoo clock. It was certainly stopped, for the weights were
off and lying upon the ground, and yet as I stood there the cuckoo
came out and cuckooed at me. I interrupted Madame Blavatsky to
say. 'Your clock has hooted me.' 'It often hoots at a stranger,'
she replied. 'Is there a spirit in it?' I said. 'I do not know,'
she said, 'I should have to be alone to know what is in it.' I
went back to the clock and began examining it and heard her say
'Do not break my clock.' I wondered if there was some hidden
mechanism, and I should have been put out, I suppose, had I found
any, though Henley had said to me, 'Of course she gets up
fraudulent miracles, but a person of genius has to do something;
Sarah Bernhardt sleeps in her coffin.
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