Her face lit with placid joy. "Oh, I'm so glad! It must be very late," she added, turning to her mother. "Yes, and we must be going," responded Mrs. Lambert, nervously. "Mr. Pratt will be impatient." "I wish you'd stay with me to-night," pleaded Kate. "It was all so wonderful. I can't let you go. Please stay! Both of you. You're too tired to go out into the raw air." "Oh no, we can't do that--not to-night," Viola answered, decisively. Morton threw back the doors. "Kate, take Miss Lambert into the dining-room and give her something to drink. She is quite exhausted. Let me steady you," he said, tenderly, touching her arm. "You fairly reel with weakness." "I will be as well as ever as soon as my blood begins to circulate," she bravely answered, and his touch quickened her pulse miraculously. As soon as Weissmann had finished taking his notes and measurements, he locked the door of the library and joined them all in the dining-room, where they were sipping coffee and nibbling cake. Morton was sitting beside Viola (who had entirely regained her girlish lightness of mood), and was chafing her cold hand in the effort to restore the circulation as well as to remove the deep mark the silken thread had made about her wrist. "We shall be obliged to shut out all young men from our committee," the old scientist jocularly remarked, as he stood looking down at them. "Lovely psychics like you would put the whole American Academy of Science in disorder." Clarke, raging with jealous fire, turned to Weissmann in truculent mood. "Well, Dr. Weissmann, how do you account for these phenomena? To whose agency do you ascribe these marvels?" "Spooks!" answered the old man, with cheerful promptness. Clarke reeled before this laconic admission. "What! You agree? You admit the agency of spirits?" "Certainly--unless I say Miss Lambert wriggled herself out of her skin, which would not be nice of me, or that you are the greatest ventriloquist in the world. No, I prefer to compliment the spirits." Clarke's face darkened. The old man's face and voice were too jocose. "I see you do not value our wonderful experiences to-night." Viola, pinching her sleeve about her wrist, looked up roguishly. "I couldn't possibly wriggle out of my gown, could I, Dr. Weissmann? And if I did, how could I get the tacks back without a hammer?" "Precisely. You would be more burglarious than the ghosts which walk through the key-holes," he answered. "And the little girl who spoke German--who was she?" asked Kate. The hour that followed was a delicious one for the young people, for they had come at last to some sweet and subtle understanding. As she recovered the use of her limbs Viola glowed with joy of Morton's change of attitude towards her. He, on his part, was puzzled by this mood. It was as if she had been vindicated to herself--liberated from some dead body of doubt.