"She didn't look spooky at all," continued Hermie. "She was quite substantial. You couldn't see through her, and she didn't melt into the air." "And yet she disappeared?" "Yes, she certainly disappeared, and in a passage where there were no doors." "Do you remember the story I told you of the lady whose astral double left her body during sleep, and haunted a friend's house?" began Veronica darkly. "Don't tell any ghost stories up here--don't!" implored Fauvette. "I'll have hysterics in another minute!" "I'm frightened!" whimpered Joan. "I vote we go downstairs," suggested Morvyth. "I don't want to play any more hide-and-seek at present." Nobody else seemed anxious to pursue the game. The attics were too charged with the occult to be entirely pleasant. Everybody made a unanimous stampede for the lower story, passing down the winding staircase with a sense of relief. Once on familiar ground again, things looked more cheery. "Back already?" commented Miss Gibbs, who had met them on the landing. "Yes, we're all--er--a little tired!" evaded Hermie, with one of her conscious blushes. "Better go to the dining-room and get out your sewing, then," replied the mistress, eyeing her keenly. The girls proceeded soberly downstairs, still keeping close together like a flock of sheep. Raymonde, however, lagged behind. For a moment or two she stood pondering, then she ran swiftly up the winding staircase again into the attic. The talk of the school that evening turned solely upon the ghost girl. Meta, who had not seen the vision, declared it was nothing but over-excited imagination, and feared that some people were apt to get hysterical; at which Hermie retorted that no one could be further from hysteria than herself, and that six independent witnesses could scarcely imagine the same thing at the same moment, without some basis for their common report. Veronica considered that they had entered unwittingly into a psychic circle, and encountered either a thought-form that had materialized, or a phantasm of the living. "Some people have capacities for astral vision that others don't possess," she said in a lowered voice. "It's quite probable that Hermie may be clairvoyante." Hermie sighed interestedly. It was pleasanter to be dubbed clairvoyante than hysterical. She had always felt that Meta did not appreciate her. "We've none of us been trained to realize our spiritual possibilities," she replied, her eyes wide and thoughtful.