"Whew! he smells like a damp match. I'll go out and smoke a minute, and
come back."

Bott dropped into the seat which Sleeny had left.

To one who has never attended one of these queer _cenacula_, it would
be hard to comprehend the unhealthy and even nauseous character of the
feeling and the conversation there prevalent. The usual decent
restraints upon social intercourse seem removed. Subjects which the
common consent of civilized creatures has banished from mixed society
are freely opened and discussed. To people like the ordinary run of the
believers in spiritism, the opera, the ballet, and the annual Zola are
unknown, and they must take their excitements where they can find them.
The dim light, the unhealthy commerce of fictitious ghosts, the
unreality of act and sentiment, the unwonted abandon, form an
atmosphere in which these second-hand mystics float away into a sphere
where the morals and the manners are altogether different from those of
their working days.

Miss Matchin had not usually joined in these morbid discussions. She
was of too healthy an organization to be tempted by so rank a mental
feast as that, and she had a sort of fierce maidenhood about her which
revolted at such exposures of her own thought. But to-night she was
sorely perplexed. She had been tormented by many fancies as she looked
out of her window into the deepening shadows that covered the lake. The
wonders she had seen in that room, though she did not receive them with
entire faith, had somewhat shaken her nerves; and now the seer sat
beside her, his pale eyes shining with his own audacity, his lank hair
dripping with sweat, his hands uneasily rubbing together, his whole
attitude expressive of perfect subjection to her will.