“Yes,” she said, “I was going to tell you but you interrupted me. The dream about the advertisement did not convince me. I felt it might be coincidence after all. That was more than a month ago and I disregarded it. But night before last I dreamed I was told, ‘The message on the slate will be true.’ I fought against it all day yesterday, all last night. To-day I gave up and came. I want you to consult your slate for me.” “Madame,” he said, “this is dreadful. Can nothing make you see the truth. There is not anything supernatural about this trade of mine. It is as simple as a Punch and Judy show. There the puppets do nothing save as the showman controls them; so of my slate and of my trances.” “But it might surprise you,” she persisted. “It might come true once. Won’t you try for me?” “I know,” he mused, “that there is such a thing as auto-hypnotism. To humor you I might try to put myself into a genuine trance. But there would be nothing about it to help you, just a mere natural sleep, artificially induced. If I babbled in it the words would have no significance, and no writing would appear on the slate unless I put it there.” “Just try,” she pleaded, “for my sake, to quiet me. If there is nothing, then I shall believe you.” “There will be nothing on the slate,” he maintained. “But suppose I should mumble some fragments of words. You might take those accidental vocables for a revelation, they might become an obsession upon you, they might warp your judgment and do you great harm. I feel we should be running a foolish risk. Give up this idea of the trance and the slate, I beg of you.” “And I beg of you to try it. You said you would do anything for me. That is what I want and nothing else.” He shook his head, his expression crestfallen, baffled, puzzled, even alarmed. “If you insist--” he faltered. “I do insist,” she said. “You wish,” he inquired, “to proceed exactly as I usually do with my simulated trance and pretended spirit replies?” “Precisely,” she affirmed. He opened a drawer below one of the cabinets and took out a hinged double slate. It was made like a child’s school-slate, but the rims instead of being wood, were of silver, the edges beaded and the flat of each rim chased in a pattern of pentacles, swastikas and pentagrams; a pentacle, a right-hand swastika, a pentagram, a left-hand swastika and so on all round. In the drawer was a box of fresh slate-pencils. This he held out to her and told her to choose one. At his bidding she broke off a short fragment and put it between the two leaves of the slate, the four faces of which were entirely blank. “Settle yourself in your chair,” he instructed her, “hold the slate in your lap. Hold it fast with both hands. First take off your other glove.” As she did this he settled himself into the armchair opposite her, took a silver paper-knife from the table and held it upright, gazing at its point. “You are not to move or speak until I tell you,” he directed her.