Certainly this made very few demands.
Christianity said that those were blessed who had not seen and yet
believed; Spiritualism said that the only reasonable belief was that
which followed seeing.
So then Laurie sat and meditated.
Once or twice that evening he looked round him tranquilly without a
touch of that terror that had seized him in the smoking-room at home.
If all this were true--and he repeated to himself that he knew it was
true--these presences were about him now, so why was it that he was no
longer frightened?
He looked carefully into the dark corner behind him, beyond the low
jutting bookshelf, in the angle between the curtained windows, at his
piano, glossy and mysterious in the gloom, at the door half-open into
his bedroom. All was quiet here, shut off from the hum of Fleet
Street; circumstances were propitious. Why was he not frightened...?
Why, what was there to frighten him? These presences were natural and
normal; even as a Catholic he believed in them. And if they manifested
themselves, what was there to fear in that?
He looked steadily and serenely; and as he looked, like the kindling
of a fire, there rose within him a sense of strange exaltation.
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