"Because they are usually clever, nimble-witted, full of intuition. Deduction is an instinct with them. And it is very easy to elaborate from a basis of truth;--it's more than a temptation to intelligence to complete a story desired and already paid for by a client. Because almost invariably the client is as stupid as the medium is intelligent. And, take it from me, it's impossible not to use your intelligence when a partly finished business deal requires it." Athalie was silent. "_I'd_ do it," laughed Mrs. Bellmore. Athalie said nothing. "Say, on the level," said the older woman, "do you see a lot that we others can't see, Miss Greensleeve?" "I have seen--some things." "Plenty, too, I'll bet! Oh, it's in your pretty face, in your eyes!--it's in you, all about you. I'm not much in that line but I can feel it in the air. Why I felt it as soon as I came into your room, but I was that stupid--thinking of Mrs. Del Garmo--and never associating it with you!... Do you do any trance work?" "No.... I have never cultivated--anything of that sort." "I know. The really gifted don't cultivate the power as a rule. Only one now and then, and here and there. The others are pure frauds--almost every one of them. But--" she looked searchingly at the girl,--"you're no fraud! Why you're full of it!--full--saturated--alive with--with vitality--psychical and physical!--You're a glorious thing--half spiritual, half human--a superb combination of vitality, sacred and profane!"--She checked herself and turned on the girl almost savagely: "Who was the fool of a man you were looking for in the crystal?... Very well; don't tell then. I didn't suppose you would. Only--God help him for the fool he is--and forgive him for what he has done to you!... And may I never enter this room again and find you with the tears freshly scrubbed out of the most honest eyes God ever gave a woman!... Good night, Miss Greensleeve!" "Good night," said Athalie. After she had closed the door and locked it she turned back into the empty room, moving uncertainly as though scarcely knowing what she was about. And then, suddenly, the terror of utter desolation seized her, and for the first time she realised what Clive had been to her, _and what he had not been_--understood for the first time in her life the complex miracle called love, its synthesis, its every element, every molecule, every atom, and flung herself across the bed, half strangled, sobbing out her passion and her grief. Dawn found her lying there; but the ravage of that night had stripped her of much that she had been, and never again would be. And what had been taken from her was slowly being replaced by what she had never yet been. Night stripped her; the red dawn clothed her. She sat up, dry-eyed, unbound her hair, flung from her the crumpled negligee. Presently the first golden-pink ray of the rising sun fell across her snowy body, and she flung out her lovely arms to it as though to draw it into her empty heart.