"Presently there came a shower of raps--here, there, everywhere, on ceiling, wainscot, doors, above our heads, under our feet--while a strain of organ music, so softly played as to seem remote, crept into the room, and increased the confusion of our senses, distracted past endurance by those meaningless rappings. "Suddenly a young woman at the end of the table gave a hysterical cry. "'She is rising, she is rising!' she said. 'Oh, to think of it, to think of it! To think how He rose--He whom they had slain--and vanished from the loving eyes of His disciples! She is like the angels who gather round His throne. Who can doubt now?' "'It's humbug, and we all know it's humbug,' grumbled the sea-dog on my right. 'But it's clever humbug; and it isn't easy to catch them napping.' "'Hush!' said the professor's wife indignantly. 'Watch her, and be silent.' "We watched. I had not once taken my eyes from that pale, spiritual face, with the eyes that had a look of seeing things in an immeasurable distance--the things that are not of this earth. Suddenly the dreamy tranquillity of the countenance changed to violent emotion, an ecstatic smile parted the pale lips, and, for the first time since I had been conscious of her presence, those exquisite lips spoke. "'It is coming, it is coming!' she cried. 'Take me, take me, take me!' And then from speech to song seemed a natural transition, as she sang in a silver-sweet soprano-- "'Angels ever bright and fair, Take, oh take me to your care.' "As that lovely melody floated through the room, the slender, girlish form was wafted slowly upward with steady, gradual motion, until it hovered halfway between the ceiling and the floor, the long white robe flowing far below the feet, the golden hair falling below the waist. Nothing more like the conventional idea of an angelic presence could have offered itself to the excited imagination. The figure remained suspended, the arms lifted, and the semi-transparent hands scattering flowers, while we gazed, enthralled by the beauty and gracefulness of that strange vision, and for the moment the hardest of us, even the sea-dog at my side, was a believer. "Nothing so beautiful could be false, dishonest, ignoble. No; whatever the rest of the _séance_ might be, this at least was no vulgar cheat. We were in the presence of a mysterious being, exceptionally gifted--human, perhaps; but not as the common herd are human. "I was weak enough to think thus. I had abandoned myself wholly to the glamour of the scene, when the sea-dog started to his feet, as the girl gave a shrill cry of fear. She hung for a moment or two over the table, head downward, and fell in a heap between two of the seated spectators, her head striking against the edge of the table, her long hair streaming wide, and faint moanings as of acute pain issuing from her pallid lips.