[Illustration: "'Aw, fergit it.'"]

This remark, duly reported to Madame Gianclis, had not put her in a
humor to concede Madame Blavatsky's soul, or any part of it, to Mrs.
Athelstone. Promptly on hearing of her pretensions, so rumor had it,
the Boston woman had announced the reincarnation of Theosophy's high
priestess in herself. And Boston believers were inclined to accept her
view, as it was difficult for them to understand how any soul with
liberty of action could deliberately choose a New York residence.

Now, all these things had filtered through to Naylor from those just
without the temple gates, for whatever the quarrels of the two societies
and their enemies, they tried to keep them to themselves. They had had
experience with publicity and had found that ridicule goes hand in hand
with it in this iconoclastic age. But out of these rumors, unconfirmed
though they were, grew a vision in Naylor's brain--a vision of a
glorified spread in the _Sunday Banner's_ magazine section. Under
a two-page "head," builded cunningly of six sizes of type, he saw
ravishingly beautiful pictures of Madame Gianclis and Mrs. Athelstone,
and hovering between them the materialized, but homeless, soul of Madame
Blavatsky, trying to make choice of an abiding-place, the whole
enlivened and illuminated with much "snappy" reading matter.

Now, Simpkins was the man to make a managing editor's dreams come true,
so Naylor rubbed the lamp for him and told him what he craved. But the
reporter's success in life had been won by an ability to combine much
extravagance of statement in the written with great conservatism in
the spoken word. Early in his experience he had learned that Naylor's
optimism, though purely professional, entailed unpleasant consequences
on the reporter who shared it and then betrayed some too generous trust;