“That must be a great deal,” said the clubman, a momentary gleam of his usual self, fading instantly from his eyes. “I certainly cannot express how much I am upset. I hate worry or anxiety and always put such troubles away and forget them. I can’t forget this. I have idolized my sister since we were babies. I have hardly slept since she talked to me. She won’t hear of a doctor. She don’t admit that there could be any pretext for her consulting a doctor, and I can’t talk to any one about her. I can talk to you. You seem a very sensible man. I should like to hear your opinion of her condition. Do you think her mind is unsettled?” “Not as bad as that,” Vargas told him. “This grave-opening idea seems to me out and out lunacy,” said the other. “Not as bad as that,” Vargas repeated. “It shows a trend of thought which may develop into something worse, but in itself it is only a foolish whim. The worst of it is that it produces a situation of great delicacy and high tension which may have almost any sort of bad result.” “I can’t imagine,” said Palgrave, “any rational or half rational basis for her whim. I can’t conceive what she thinks she will accomplish by opening that coffin or why she wants it opened. I was at Marian’s funeral and the two coffins made a precious lot of talk, I can tell you. I assumed that Llewellyn had some wild, sentimental notion of the second coffin waiting there for him. Constance declares it was not empty, but she won’t say what she expects to find in it and I believe she don’t say because she has no idea at all.” “You are right,” said the clairvoyant, “she hasn’t.” “Well,” said the other, “what do _you_ think she will find in it?” “I have no opinions whatever,” said Vargas, “as to whether it is empty or not or as to what may be in it. I have no basis of conjecture. But whether empty or not or whatever may be in it, I dread the effect on her. She is sure to be baffled in her hopes. Her present state of mind is a sort of reawakening in a civilized, educated, cultured woman of the primitive, childish, savage faith in sorcery, almost in rudimentary fetishism. She would not acknowledge it, but her attitude is very like that of a fetish-worshipper. Her mind does not reason. She is possessed of a blind, vague feeling that her welfare is implicated with whatever is in that coffin, and a compelling hope in the efficiency of the mere act of opening it, as a sort of magic rite. She is buoyed up with uncertainty. Whether she finds something or nothing she will be brought face to face with final unmistakable disappointment. I dread the moment of that realization.” “I felt something like that,” said her brother. “Anyhow I brought a doctor with me, but she must not suspect that as long as we don’t need him.” “That is why your carriage has the shades down,” Vargas hazarded. “Is that the reason yours has its shades down?” the other inquired. “That is it,” Vargas confessed. “I brought a doctor too.”