nerves for spurring him to such flagrant imbecilities.

"This is all nonsense," he told himself, "all fancy, all a world created,
peopled, endowed with life by my desirous mind, which longs for a new
sensation. I will not encourage this absurdity. I will be calm, cold,
observant, discriminating. This is the same darkness in which every
night I sleep, with no sense of being surrounded by forms which I cannot
see, pressed upon by the denizens of some other sphere, not that in which
I breathe and live."

He deliberately detached himself from his mood of keen expectation, and
ardently resolved to anticipate nothing. And at this moment the table
began to shift along the carpet, to twist under their hands, to rap, to
tremble, and to pulsate, as if breath had entered into it. Like some live
animal it stirred beneath their pressing fingers.

"It is beginning," Julian whispered.

"Animal magnetism," Valentine murmured.

"Yes, of course," Julian replied. "Shall I ask--"

"Hush!" Valentine interrupted.

Julian was silent.

For some time the table continued its stereotyped performances. Then
it tremblingly ceased, and stood, mere dead furniture of every day, wood
on which lay the four hands made deliberately limp. A long period of
unpopulated silence ensued, and through that silence, very gradually,