She was staring
thoughtfully at the fire. Mrs. Stapleton laid a sympathetic hand on
the other's knee.
"Dearest--" she began.
"No; it is nothing, darling," said Lady Laura.
* * * * *
Meanwhile the medium was picking his way through the foggy streets.
Figures loomed up, sudden and enormous, and vanished again. Smoky
flares of flame shone like spots of painted fire, bright and
unpenetrating, from windows overhead; and sounds came to him through
the woolly atmosphere, dulled and sonorous. It would, so to speak,
have been a suitably dramatic setting for his thoughts if he had been
thinking in character, vaguely suggestive of presences and hints and
peeps into the unknown.
But he was a very practical man. His spiritualistic faith was a
reality to him, as unexciting as Christianity to the normal Christian;
he entertained no manner of doubt as to its truth.
Beyond all the fraud, the self-deception, the amazing feats of the
subconscious self, there remained certain facts beyond doubting--facts
which required, he believed, an objective explanation, which none but
the spiritualistic thesis offered. He had far more evidence, he
considered sincerely enough, for his spiritualism than most Christians
for their Christianity.
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