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.
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