We passed the house, and went on to Mrs. Dane's.

She had given us no inkling of what we were to have that night, and
my wife conjectured a conjurer! She gave me rather a triumphant
smile when we were received in the library and the doors into the
drawing-room were seen to be tightly closed.

We were early, as my wife is a punctual person, and soon after our
arrival Sperry came. Mrs. Dane was in her chair as usual, with her
companion in attendance, and when she heard Sperry's voice outside
she excused herself and was wheeled out to him, and together we
heard them go into the drawing-room. When the Robinsons arrived she
and Sperry reappeared, and we waited for her customary announcement
of the evening's program. When none came, even during the meal, I
confess that my curiosity was almost painful.

I think, looking back, that it was Sperry who turned the talk to the
supernatural, and that, to the accompaniment of considerable gibing
by the men, he told a ghost story that set the women to looking back
over their shoulders into the dark corners beyond the zone of
candle-light. All of us, I remember, except Sperry and Mrs. Dane,
were skeptical as to the supernatural, and Herbert Robinson believed
that while there were so-called sensitives who actually went into
trance, the controls which took possession of them were buried
personalities of their own, released during trance from the
sub-conscious mind.

"If not," he said truculently, "if they are really spirits, why can't
they tell us what is going on, not in some vague place where they are