“I know we didn’t, but there always seemed a possibility. The door was ajar; it wasn’t locked, and it has never ceased to be ajar. Often when the mere thought-reading, as you call it, is flowing along most smoothly, I feel that if only I could abandon my whole consciousness a little more completely, something, somebody would really take control of me. I wish it would; and yet I’m frightened of it. It might revenge itself for all the frauds I’ve perpetrated in its name. Come, let’s play piquet and forget about it all.” * * * * * It was settled that Julia should be present next day when the stranger came for her sitting, in order that if Richard’s thought-reading was not coming through any better than it had done lately, she should help in the rappings and the luminous patches and the musical box. Mrs. Gardner was punctual to her appointment, a tall, quiet, well-dressed woman who stated with perfect frankness her object in wishing for a séance and her views about spirit-communication. “I should immensely like to believe in spirit-communication,” she said, “such as I am told you are capable of producing; but at present I don’t.” “It is important that the atmosphere should not be one of hostility,” said Waghorn in his dreamy, professional manner. “I bring no hostility,” she said. “I am in a state, shall we say, of benevolent neutrality, unless”--and she smiled in a charming manner--“unless benevolent neutrality has come to mean malevolent hostility. That, I assure you, is not the case with me. I want to believe.” She paused a moment. “And may I say this without offence?” she asked. “May I tell you that spirit-rappings and curious lights and sounds of music do not interest me in the least?” They were already seated in the room where the séance was to be held. The windows were thickly curtained, there was only a glimmer of light from the red lamp, and even this the spirits would very likely desire to have extinguished. If this visitor took no interest in such things, Waghorn felt that he and his sister had wasted their time in adjusting the electric hammer (made to rap by the pressure of the foot on a switch concealed in the thick rug underneath the table) behind the sliding-panel, in stringing across the ceiling the invisible wires on which the luminous globes ran, and in making ready all the auxiliary paraphernalia in case the genuine telepathy was not on tap. So with voice dreamier than before and with slower utterance as he was supposed to be beginning to sink into trance, he just said: “I can’t foretell the manner in which they may choose to make their presence known.”