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Flames by Robert Smythe Hichens
page 94 of 702 (13%)
"Now I know why I stopped undressing just now," said Valentine. "I must
have had a sense that you were coming. Were you thinking very hard of me
to-night and of our sittings?"

"Rather! It is the oddest thing, but even since we had that talk with
the doctor and agreed to give the whole thing up, I've been perfectly
miserable. I haven't enjoyed a single thing I've done since that night."

"Nor I," said Valentine.

"What! you have been as bad? And without having Marr continually at your
elbow!"

"Marr again!"

"Again! Yes, I should think so. That chap has taken a fancy to me,
I suppose. Anyhow, directly I walk into the club, morning, noon, or
night, up he comes. He must live there. And the first thing he says is,
'Have you gone on with your sittings? You should, you should.' To-day
he changed his formula and said, 'You must,' and when I was going away,
he looked at me in a damned odd way and remarked in his low, toneless
voice, 'You will.' I declare I almost think he must have a sort of
influence over me, for I couldn't go to bed for the life of me, and
here I am. By the way, Marr seems to have a sort of power of divination.
Last night, when I happened to see him, he began talking about doctors,
and, by Jove, didn't he abuse them! He says they stand more in the way
of the development of the spiritual forces in man than any other body
of people. He denounced them all as low materialists, immersed in the
tinkering of the flesh. 'What does the flesh matter?' he said. 'It is
nothing. It is only an envelope. And the more tightly it is fastened
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