She handed him the ball, wondering what was going to happen next. He took it and put it on the thumb of his right hand as one does with a coin when tossing. He flicked it into the air, and, to the amazement of every one, saving always Franklin Marmion, it rose slowly up to the cloudless sky, followed by the gaze of a hundred eyes, and vanished. Then he bowed again to Brenda, and said in the most commonplace tone: "It is out of harm's way now. Thank you once more for your condescension." "But how did it go up like that?" asked Brenda, looking him frankly and somewhat defiantly in the eyes. "That, Miss Huysman," he replied with perfect gravity, "was only a demonstration of what Spiritualists and Theosophists are accustomed to call levitation. It is only a matter of reversing the force of gravity." "Is that all?" laughed Brenda, as she turned away. "You talk of it as though it were a matter of turning a paper bag inside out." "The one is as easy as the other," he smiled. "It is only a question of knowing how to do it." She walked back to her chair very much mystified, and, for the first time in her so far triumphal journey through the interlude between the eternities which we call life, a trifle humiliated: but that fact, of course, she kept to herself. As she dropped back in her chair, she said to Lord Leighton: "That was pretty wonderful, wasn't it? I'm quite certain that there's no trickery about it. What he did, he really did do." "I don't pretend to be able to explain it," he replied, "but for all that I've seen very much the same sort of thing done by the fakirs in India, and I think it's generally admitted that that is either a matter of trickery or hypnotism. They make you believe you see what you really don't see at all." "That's about it," said Merrill, with a short laugh, "Of course no one who knows anything about the East will deny that hypnotism is a fact, although I must say that these same fakirs have tried it with me more than once and found me a quite hopeless subject." Even as though he had heard him, Phadrig came towards them at the moment, and said in his polite, impersonal tone: "Commander Merrill, I am going to try one or two experiments now which I should like to have very closely watched. I know that there is no keener observer in the world than the skilled British naval officer. May I ask for your assistance?" There was something in his tone which made it quite impossible to refuse, so he replied: "You have shown us a good many wonders already, Mr Phadrig, and unless you've hypnotised the whole of us, I haven't a notion how you have done it; but if I can find you out I will." "That is exactly what I wish, sir," said Phadrig, as he bowed to the ladies and went back to the centre of the circle. Merrill followed him, and, with the three Professors, formed a square about him. Phadrig, turning slowly round so that his voice might reach all his audience, said: