It was evening[53], and we were occupied in our respective tasks, and so entirely engrossed by them as to be disposed to resent any interruption, when "Mary" bent across the table, and speaking in a low tone, said to me, "There is a spirit in the room who wants to speak to us. Shall I let him?" I assented on the condition that he had something to tell us really worth hearing. She then became entranced, being magnetised by his presence; and after telling me that he spoke with a strong American accent and professed to be a "meta-physical doctor"--meaning, she supposed, a doctor in metaphysics--repeated the following after him; for I could neither see nor hear him:-- "You two have been put together for a work which you could not do separately. I have been shown a chart of your past histories, containing your characters and your past incarnations. She is of a highly active, wilful disposition, and represents the centrifugal force. You, Caro, are her opposite, and, being contemplative and concentrated, represent the centripetal force. Without her expansive energy you would become altogether indrawn and inactive in deed; and without your restraining influence she would go forth and become dissipated in expansiveness. So extraordinary is her outward tendency that nothing but such an organism as she now has could repress it and keep it within bounds. It is for the work she has to do that she has been placed in a body of weakness and suffering. She is the man--and you the woman--element in your joint system. I can see only her female incarnations, but she has been a man much oftener than a woman; while you have generally been a woman, and would be one now but for the work you have to do. Even as a woman she has always been much more man than woman, for her wilfulness and recklessness have led her into enterprises of incredible daring. Nothing restrained her when her will prompted her. She would wreck any work to follow that, and only by combination with your centripetal tendency can she do the present work. As a man she has been initiated, once, a long time ago, in Thebes, afterwards in India. The things she has done in her past lives! Well, _I_ do not say they were wrong, for I do not hold the existence of moral evil. All things are allowed for good ends; but this is a difficult truth to express." Here she spoke in her own person, having under his magnetism recovered her own vision and recollection, saying--