"She dare not refuse. Her 'control' would cut her down where she stands. She has no choice where they are concerned. The hands are upon her this moment," he ended, triumphantly. A shudder of despair went over the girl. "It's true; I feel them here." She touched her throat. "They are all against me--the living and the dead," and she fell into her chair with a moan of despair, her beauty, her shining garments adding to the pity of her fate. Kate's heart went out to her without reservation as she knelt beside her. "I am for you, my dear, and so is my brother; we will help you, I give you my word. Be brave. You must see Morton and Dr. Weissmann. They will know what to do." Viola turned upon her mother with a wail of supplication. "Take me home, mother, take me home!" Mrs. Lambert herself was weeping now. "I dare not, dearie, not till _they_ consent. Be patient--they have promised to release you after this test." Over the girl's face a stony rigidity spread, her eyelids drooped, her head rolled from side to side, a pitiful, moaning cry came from her pinched lips, and then, at last, drawing a long, peaceful sigh, she slept. Kate, in terror, stood watching, waiting till the lines of struggle, of pain, smoothed out, and the girl, doubly beautiful in her resignation, lay like one adorned for the angel of death. Then Clarke said, solemnly: "She has ceased to struggle. She is in good hands, in the care of those who love her and understand her; when she wakes she will be newly consecrated to her great work. Come." Kate, awed and helpless, permitted him to lead her from the room, but when fairly outside she turned upon him fiercely: "Don't touch me. I despise you. You are all crazy, a set of fanatics, and you'd sacrifice that poor girl without a pang. But you sha'n't do it, I tell you--you sha'n't do it!" And with that defiant phrase she swept past him down to the street, forgetting Dr. Britt in her frenzy of indignation and defeat. VI SERVISS LISTENS SHREWDLY Meanwhile Morton, with an armful of the publications of "The Society for Psychical Research" before him, was busied with the arguments of the spiritists and their bearings on Viola Lambert's case. The thing claimed--that the dead spoke through her--he could not for a moment entertain. Such a claim was opposed to all sound thinking, to every law known to science--was, in short, preposterous. He had acquired all the prejudices against such a faith from Emerson's famous phrase, "rat-hole philosophy," down to the latest sneer in the editorial columns of _The Pillar_, to the latest "exposé" in _The Blast_. Upon the most charitable construction, those who believed in rappings, planchettes, materialized forms, ghosts, messages on slates, and all the rest of the amazing catalogue, were either half-baked thinkers, intellectual perverts, or soft-pated sentimentalists, whose judgment was momentarily clouded by the passing of a grief.