"One of the women has white hair and vivid black eyebrows. She talks wildly sometimes; sometimes she’s quite calm. The other woman is middle-aged and has a soft voice. The little girl is dressed in blue; she is sitting on a box listening. The crazy woman is kissing her." He shook himself, shuddered and opened his eyes, to find Miss Payson gazing upon him, her hand to her heart. "It’s strange!" she said. "It sounds nonsensical, I suppose," he said, "but that’s just what I get. Can you make anything of it?"’ "It’s all true!" said Clytie. "That very thing happened to me when I was a little girl—so long ago, that I had almost forgotten it." "You remember it, then?" "Yes, it all comes back to me—though I have wondered vaguely about it often enough. It was when I was four years old and I went with my mother to call on this strange, crazy woman—if she were crazy! I never knew. I never dared speak to father about it. He never knew that we went, I think. I had an idea that he wouldn’t have liked it, had he known." "And your mother?" "She died—the same year, I think. We left San Francisco, father and I, soon after, and we lived abroad for several years. I didn’t even remember the scene until long afterward, when something brought it up. Then it was like a dream or a vision." "Do you know, Miss Payson, I feel that you have very strong mediumistic powers; I can feel your magnetism. I think that you might develop yourself so as to be able to use your psychic force." She took it seriously. "Yes, I think I do have a certain amount of capacity that way. I can never depend upon it, though, but my intuitions are very strong and occasionally rather strange things have happened to me." It amused him to see how quickly she had fallen into the trap he had set for her. Experience had taught him it was a common enough assertion for women to make, and he was cynically incredulous. He was a little disappointed, too; as, in his opinion, it discounted her intelligence. Nevertheless, he found in it a way to manipulate her. "Perhaps I might help you to develop it," he suggested, "although I’m not much of a clairvoyant myself; I claim only to be a scientific palmist." "I think you are wonderful," Clytie asserted, giving him a glance of frank admiration. "This test alone would prove it. You see, having some slight power myself, I’m more ready to believe that others have it." He waived her compliment with apparent modesty. "Women are more apt to be gifted that way—it isn’t often I attempt a psychic reading. What is written in the palm I can read; as a physician diagnoses a case from symptoms in the pulse and tongue and temperature, so I read a person’s character from what I see in the hand. I have been particularly interested in yours, Miss Payson, and perhaps I have been able to give you more than usual. I hope I may have the opportunity of seeing you again; I’m quite sure I can help you, or put you in the way of assistance."