A little shudder ran through the group at these bold words. Mrs Ray Jefferson lifted her head and cast glances of triumph about, as one who should say, "I told you she would shock you all!" There was scarcely a man or woman there who did not attend church on Sundays, and who had not managed to make a comfortable compact between the tenets of religion and the demands of social and worldly pleasures. Not one who, if taken to task on the momentous subject of a spiritual future, could have given any rational explanation of why he or she held certain vague ideas on the subject of salvation, or put off the deeper consideration of the subject to some indefinite period when they would have had their fill of vanities, and lost either the means or the desire to pursue them. And yet there was a subtle _frou-frou_ of rustling skirts as the women drew slightly away, and a decided appearance of discomfort on the faces of the men, to whom an unpleasant truth was suddenly and sharply conveyed, and who found themselves strangely powerless to combat, or argue out its real meaning. CHAPTER NINE. DISCUSSION. Colonel Estcourt came to the rescue. "No doubt," he said, "the subject and this view of the subject seems a little strange to our friends here. We must remember they have not been accustomed to hear it freely discussed, as we have." "It _is_ strange," said Mrs Jefferson, rallying her energies, "but we should not shirk its consideration for that reason. I quite agree with Madame Zairoff that people don't think half seriously enough of their real natures, the mysterious inner _something_ which we all feel we possess, but whose voice we stifle in the din of the world. And yet," she added, sighing pathetically as she looked at the great Worth's `creation,'--"the vanities are very pleasant. Why should we turn anchorites?" "There is not the slightest necessity to do that," said the princess, smiling at the unuttered thought she had read in that glance. "Far from it. The gravest duties of life are generally those that meet us in the world, and are called forth by our actions in that world. All lives are not meant to be isolated, and certainly none for the whole period of earth life. A person would have to be very sure that he was _free_ to cut himself adrift from his fellows before he would even be permitted to do it." "Permitted!" echoed Mrs Jefferson, rather vaguely. "But by whom?" "The teachers of occult science," answered the Princess Zairoff. "But who are they?" exclaimed the little American.