“Not all,” she admitted. “He asked me if I had not told him that what I wanted in this life was to spend as much as possible of my time on earth with him, for us two to be together as much as circumstances would allow, and as long as death would permit. I told him of course I had said it, not once but over and over. He asked me if I still felt that way. I told him I did. He said it made no difference to him, he was past any feelings, but if that was what I really wanted he advised me to let that grave alone.” “Take his advice, by all means,” Vargas exclaimed. “It is good advice. You let that grave alone.” “I am determined,” she told him. “Madame,” he said, “will you listen to me?” “Certainly,” she replied. “If you have anything to say to the purpose. But not to fault-findings or to scoldings.” “Mrs. Llewellyn,” Vargas began, “what happened during your former visit to me has demolished the entire structure of my spiritual existence. I had the sincerest disbelief in astrology, in prophecy, in ghosts, in apparitions, in superstitions, each and all, in supernaturalism in general, in religions, individually and collectively, in the idea of future life. Upon the most materialistic convictions my intellectual life was placid and unruffled, and my soul-life, if I had any, undisturbed by anything save occasional and very evanescent twinges of conscience over the contemptible duplicity of my way of livelihood. Intermittently only I despised myself. Mostly I only despised my dupes and generally not even that. Rather I merely smiled tolerantly at the childishness of their profitable credulity. Never did I have the remotest approach to any shadow of belief that there could be anything occult beneath or behind any such jugglery as I continually made use of. The matter of your horoscope and mine I took as mere coincidence. It might affect my feelings, never my reason; my heart, never my head. My head is involved now, my reason at fault. In the writing on that slate I am face to face with something, if not supernatural, at least preternatural. The thing is beyond our ordinary experience of the ordinary operation of those forces which make the world go. It depends upon something not yet understood, not necessarily inexplicable, but unexplained. It is uncanny. I don’t like it. Yet I do not yield to its influence. I am not swept away. If I dwell upon it, I know it will unsettle my reason. I do not mean to dwell upon it, I mean to get away from it, to ignore it, to forget it, and I counsel you to do likewise.” “Your counsel,” she said, “has a long-winded preamble, but is entirely unacceptable.” “I have more to say,” he went on. “Mere bewilderment of mind is not an adequate ground for action. There is a fine old proverb that says, ‘When in doubt, do nothing.’ Take its advice and your husband’s; do nothing.”