“Heaven keep me from tears!” she wailed. “If I cry I shall yield utterly. Oh, dear, oh, dear! I so looked forward to meeting you and securing your help. Are you really so ignorant of Karl’s powers that you lay stress on what we call seeing and hearing? They mean nothing to him. I am not blind if others are. Oh, if only I did not love him so I might perhaps be more to him!” I am free to admit that her words stirred me strangely. Could it be that while I was puzzling my brains with the formulæ of the least considered branches of science, this girl, unaided, almost untaught, had solved the mystery which enfolded the broken love story of Karl and Maggie? Did she share with the dead and gone Armenian the most disastrous attribute of a vector equation to the unmeasured force which united the spiritual existences of her rival and her lover? From the apparently secure foundation of physics and magnetic attraction I was projected into an astral shadow-land, whirled away on an unbridled steed into a kingdom of wild imaginings. On a sudden in the midst of men and day, And while I walk’d and talk’d as heretofore, I seemed to move among a world of ghosts And feel myself the shadow of a dream. Yet it was no mystic but a real woman who faced me in that delightful room, with its Louis Seize furniture, its charming little Corots and water-colors by David Cox, its fragrant perfume of Provençal flowers, and all that air of subtle refinement which clings to the abode of a young and beautiful girl as a well-made gown clings to the contour of her body, never obtrusive, always in exquisite taste, and ever revealing fresh harmonies of line and tint. Her actress-mother dowered her with the trick of speech, of impassioned gesture. She flung an accusing hand towards me. “Why do you stand silent?” she demanded. “Is it because of a wayward phantasy that I should have revealed my torturing thoughts to you, a mere stranger? Why are you here to-night? To help Karl, you may say. Then help me, also, or you may go through the rest of your life haunted by most unpleasing specters.” “I will gladly do all in my power to help Karl, my dear young lady, and it will be an added joy if the counsel and assistance I can lend to my friend prove equally beneficial to you. But surely you must see that I am moving in a maze. You speak of that which I do not comprehend. If, indeed, you and others are subject to unexplained manifestations, it is all-important that we should discuss them fully, rationally, and in an environment more suitable than the present time and place. Then, and only by such means, can we reach anything in the nature of a logical conclusion.” I felt that my speech was stilted, but I was vainly searching for a more equable base of action than her wild statements afforded. Her lips curved into a bitter smile, but there was no softening in the gleaming eyes.