"I have known her from a baby, and her father and mother also; I have inhabited her, as I have inhabited you, although I have never been able to give her the slightest intimation of the fact. You are both, physically, the most perfect human beings I was ever in; and in heart and mind the most simply made, the most richly gifted, and the most admirably balanced; and I have inhabited many thousands, and in all parts of the globe. "You, Barty, are the only one I have ever been able to hold communication with, or make to feel my presence; it was a strange chance, that--a happy accident; it saved your life. I am the only one, among many thousands of homeless spirits, who has ever been able to influence an earthly human being, or even make him feel the magnetic current that flows through us all, and by which we are able to exist; all the rappings and table-turnings are mere hysterical imaginations, or worse--the cheapest form of either trickery or self-deception that can be. Barty, your unborn children are of a moment to me beyond anything you can realize or imagine, and Julia must be their mother; Julia Royce, and no other woman in the world. "It is in you to become so great when you are ripe that she will worship the ground you walk upon; but you can only become as great as that through her and through me, who have a message to deliver to mankind here on earth, and none but you to give it a voice--not one. But I must have my reward, and that can only come through your marriage with Julia. "When you have read this, Barty, go straight to Riffrath, and see Julia if you can, and be to her as you have so often been to any women you wished to please, and who were not worth pleasing. Her heart is her own to give, like her fortune; she can do what she likes with them both, and will--her mother notwithstanding, and in the teeth of the whole world. "Poor as you are, maimed as you are, irregularly born as you are, it is better for her that she should be your wife than the wife of any man living, whoever he be. "Look at yourself in the glass, and say at once, "'Martia, I'm off to Riffrath as soon as I've swallowed my breakfast!' "And then I'll go about my business with a light heart and an easy mind. "Martia." Much moved and excited, Barty looked in the glass and did as he was bid, and the north left him; and Johanna brought him his breakfast, and he started for Riffrath. * * * * * All through this winter that was so happily spent by Barty in Düsseldorf things did not go very happily in London for the Gibsons. Mr. Gibson was not meant for business; nature intended him as a rival to Keeley or Buckstone.