_F. W. H. Myers communicating_, said that he had come to me on the evening of 4th February, that I seemed to recognise him, and that he thought he had "got his message through to me," and hoped that I should write to Dr Hodgson to that effect. In answering Dr Hodgson's letter I denied the Myers' episode _in toto_, so far as _my_ consciousness was concerned. In fact, the Gifford incident put all else so entirely out of my mind that I fear I did not even mention to Dr Hodgson that my _first_ thought that night had been connected with Mr Myers. Anyway, the next letter from Boston enclosed an account of a sitting, where Mr Myers came and apologised for having misled Dr Hodgson about my recognition of him. His words were almost literally as follows:-- "I am extremely sorry, my dear Hodgson, about that affair with Miss Bates. I should not have thought of mentioning it to you had I not felt convinced that she recognised me. _Her astral body was quite aware of my presence_, and I quite thought she had realised it on the physical plane" (the italics are mine). It would seem that the Myers' message was in the very act of transmission from my astral to my normal consciousness when this man Gifford must have come, switching off the telephone for Mr Myers, and getting on to it himself. Probably his great distress of mind would have made him the stronger force of the two for the time being. There must always be many disappointments of this kind in our research. There is always something which so nearly succeeds and then just fails at last. This _must_ be the case where conditions are so fine and subtle and so easily disturbed, and where our own ignorance of many necessary factors is so profound. This makes it none the less disheartening at times! Later I made an attempt with my friend Baroness Rosenkrantz of Rome to get a message through the other way--_i.e._ from Mr Myers and myself to Dr Hodgson, _via_ Mrs Piper. The Baroness and I had a little "sitting" alone, wrote one or two short messages with a couple of extracts from Mr Myers' own writings, sealed up the envelope carefully, and I forwarded it to Dr Hodgson. But the test failed. Two years later Dr Hodgson spoke of the letter as being still intact. CHAPTER XIII A SECOND VISIT TO INDIA, 1903 My second visit to India took place in the early months of 1903, and I approached it this time from Burmah. Fielding Hall's "Soul of a People" had thrown its magic spell over me, and Miss Greenlow and I were both anxious also to see the far-famed Shwe Dagon Temple.